Rage of the Red Cross
by the Tormentor
Summary: Devices discovered beneath the surface of Sera lead to a world where monsters rule over humanity. An Onyx Guard, a tortured survivor, finds herself as the sole hope for this world's survival. Secrets long buried are now making themselves known, and Eren and his friends must face the other great enemy of mankind, unaware of the hidden horrors rising in the dark...
1. ACT 1: Prologue

**Rage of the Red Cross**

 _ **-1 month prior to Gears of War 3-**_

"And, _ker-blammo!_ The damn grub didn't know what hit him! That's what ye' get for messin' with the real folk of Sera!"

Life was not easy for the Stranded of Sera, especially since the Locust and the COG were constantly fighting, and with humanity getting boned in the ass by the great big thrust that was the Locust war machine, the COG was seemingly on its last legs. It was tough fighting against an enemy that was hell-bent on annihilation, and with the destruction of Jacinto, there was no longer a safe refuge, but then again there was no more Hollow, at least for the majority of Sera. Who knows how many tunnels the grubs dug?

The Stranded camp in what was left of the Southern islands was the closest thing to what safety could be found in the ruins of Sera. Not too many people nor Locust were spotted here. Ideal for Stranded. The sunny skies and clear waters were a haven for the refugees of post E-Day Sera.

"Tell us more!" A child, who could not have been beyond the age of ten, spoke happily. His mother, wearing tattered clothing and a tan hoodie, stood above him, a sawed-off shotgun at her side.

"Sorry little one, no can do." The man, a gruff gray-bearded man from the North, as his accent showed, got up and walked to his tent, located just behind the turret on the walls surrounding their camp. "I'll finish the story tomorrow after my shift. Now you be a good boy, you here?"

"I will!" And then the child ran off. There were other kids here as well, refugees from the city orphanages that had escaped the Nemacyst bombardments, or the Kryll infestations.

"It's strange, isn't it Brendan?" The child's mother asked, the man's name revealed. "Seeing kids again. When was the last time you saw kids?"

"Back when Ilima was still above ground." Brendan sighed out. "You think this'll all be over soon? We can stop living in tents and camps and start actually living again as a society?"

"Life will return to normal, Brendan. Hope isn't always there when you need it, but some day it will come. We just have to wait." The mother said, and walked off to find her runaway son, who had entered the large building which doubled as the armory and the living quarters of the Stranded who were too weak to fight or too young.

Brendan sighed again, his trademark action. How long has it been since Jacinto, two years? Feels like longer. But every day with no Locust or even some other rowdy Stranded was a good day in Brendan's eyes.

"Yo, B!" The tower watchman yelled down, "We got scouts coming back! And they got a friend." The man's longshot was aimed somewhere down east, where most of the rumored supply bunkers were buried in wartime emergencies. Scouts often visited, but the risk to go there was immense; pools of imulsion carved the once-busy streets, making traversing the east hard as hell. To say that the scouts brought a friend was astonishing.

"Who is it?" Brendan asked.

"Dunno. Wearing black armor, blue biolights…" The man focused with his scope. "Oh man, that's an Onyx Guard they got!"

After the collapse of the COG with the disappearance of Chairman Prescott, most of the COG forces went into a state of survival, scrounging whatever resources they could pick up from what remained. Rumor has it that most of the COG went on some ship, the _CNV Sovereign_ near the island of Vectes _._ The ship was immense, and it was smart to stay in the water; Locust weren't fond of digging beneath an ocean.

The elite of the COG forces, such as the golden gears and the Onyx Guard went down the same path, but some stayed true to their word and protected what little remained of their leadership. But finding an Onyx Guard here, in the ass-end of nowhere, spiked Brendan's curiosity. They would never venture this far south without something eyeing their interests, or their leader's.

"An Onyx Guard, really? You sure that's not just your old age?"

"Nu-uh! I know an Onyx Guard when I see one! Shit, she don't look too good. Looks like she got gang-banged by a hive of tickers." The watchman stood aside for Brendan to climb up on the watchtower and grab his own longshot, and true to the old man's word there was a female Onyx Guard being carried by one of the bigger scouts. The girl's lancer was held limply in her hand, the chainsaw bayonet coated with blood and imulsion. Her body was splattered with blood, some of it probably her own.

"Hey let us in! We gots a wounded!" One of the scouts yelled. The gate opened, and just in time. Bullets flew over the scout's head, alerting the camp to what appeared to be a single Locust hunter. Brendan aimed the longshot and fired, the Locust's head exploding into a pop.

"Damn, just one?" The old man wondered. "There's never just one."

"Yeah, well, talk to her." The scout carrying the Onyx Guard said. "She cut through them grubs like old cheese, but one of 'em got a potshot and dropped her. Would have died if it weren't for us." The Onyx Guard moaned weakly, blood escaping the cracked plates of black armor.

"Well, bring her in! We can't have a dead Onyx Guard on our hands, can we? Not with all the good secrets they carry." Brendan shouted, and muttered the last part to himself. His distrust of the COG was not as large as the other's, some outright hated them, but he didn't like the secrecy of what they were known for. Experimentations, sabotage of Stranded camps, and even data for the Hammer of Dawn guidance lasers. Onyx Guards were rumored to know every little secret the COG kept hidden, and now with one of them in Stranded custody, they might get to know everything about the war.

"Sure thing boss." The gate opened, and medical aid rushed to collect the wounded woman. The scout carrying her passed a geobot, about the size of a human head, to Brendan's hands.

"She was carrying this. Before she passed out she told us to grab it." The scout said quietly to Brendan. "And she wasn't alone. There was a whole squad of Onyx down there, maybe a couple dozen. They were looking for something buried in the ground, Brendan. Something that the Locust found. Before the Hollow was flooded out."

"Do you think whatever's in here will tell us what they were trying to find?" Brendan asked, hefting the geobot.

"I don't know. She probably knows, and whatever it is I'm guessing it's not going to be good." The scout wandered off, his squad waiting him as he entered the building. Brendan peered at the geobot in his hand. Just what did she find down there? The man looked to see the Onyx Guard being carried away by a doctor and his team of nurses and decided to follow them. Her lancer was taken by one of the gunsmiths, eager to have another lancer mark II in the armory.

"Doctor, how is she?" Brendan asked as they entered what remained of the town's hospital. If supplies were low in groceries and pharmacies, hospitals were practically vacant. Thankfully, this island's town had a pretty secure locking code which Brendan's Stranded managed to crack open. The goldmine of medical aid was a godsend to them.

"She'll live." Was what the doctor replied. "It'll be a pain to get the bullets out, but with some time she'll heal." The group entered an open room with an IV bag and some medical tools. The clambering of other doctors and nurses working on other patients were a constant in the hospital. Rustlung and battle wounds were the most common, the moans and the coughing echoed even into the camp outside. The nurses left to keep the doctor alone, but Brendan stayed.

"Doc, you mind if I talk to her?" Brendan held the geobot up. "One of scouts said she was looking for something." The doctor stared at Brendan, and then the geobot, and then left, leaving the wounded Onyx Guard and the Stranded leader alone.

"Hey." Brendan tapped the black helmet she wore. The blue eye protectors were cracked but online. He knew that she could see if she were still awake. A low groan, and the woman's arm reached for her head. She wheezed, and finally spoke.

"Where… am I?" She asked. She had an accent, either she was from the North like he was or was one of the Tyrans. Her hand waved in front of her face, trying to divert the bright lights of the hospital lamps.

"You're in good hands." Brendan said as he sat down on a chair, and the Onyx Guard looked left to see the Stranded leader and laughed. It was a weak laugh, which was followed by coughing and her body spasms in pain. It seemed that she believed contrary to what Brendan said.

"Really? Me, an Onyx Guard, in Stranded hands. Might as well rip off my armor now and put my face between your legs." She said, and Brendan snarled at the immense accusation of such a hateful act. He knew Stranded that did that to other Stranded, even captured COG soldiers. It was disgusting.

"I am not going to rape you." He said vehemently, distancing himself from what she saw in him.

"Could've fooled me, Stranded." She looked downwards to see her geobot in Brendan's hand. "Give me that. Right now!" She demanded, and would have stood up if it weren't for the immense pain in her stomach. She clutched her side, where a gnasher shotgun got a lucky hit on her gut.

"Not before you tell us what you were doing down there. We haven't seen COG forces in little over two years, and now you decide to just pop back up again. This time, on our island. Kinda makes a man wonder." Brendan said out loud, and behold two armed guards, one of them carrying her lancer stepped in. They knew it would be really dumb to kill her, but to add intimidation. Brendan was used to scaring away other Stranded and the occasional savage Locust, but an Onyx Guard might be another story.

"If you're trying to scare me, you might as well be trying to do this to a Berserker." She said plainly, and the two guards looked at each other in nervousness. This woman wasn't even slightly afraid, and if she was she was doing an expert job at it. "Look, it's nice of you Stranded to just pick me up and drop me off in your hospital, but if you're trying to play nice to see the stuff on that geobot, it's classified. Y'know, secret shit that normal people aren't supposed to see?"

"Nobody's normal anymore, COG." One of guards spat out. "You just might be the last of the Onyx Guard, so keep that in mind."

"Huh. That's a sobering thought. What happened to the rest of my squad?" She asked.

"They're dead." The other guard said. "Anthony said that the rest of you were slaughtered by the pair of Brumaks he found dead near where he found you." The Onyx Guard was silent for a brief second. Hearing that her squad was dead, and her alive, confirmed what the Stranded guard said; she was indeed the last of the Onyx Guard.

"Damn…" She mumbled to herself. She turned to Brendan. "Will you let me go if I tell you what's on that geobot? It's not like I have anyone to report to anymore, and there's no way in hell that I'm getting back to New Jacinto now." She said somberly, and Brendan felt pity for the last Onyx Guard alive.

"You'll be let go, but not before I know what's on here." Brendan made his point by shaking the geobot. "Normally I don't care about the COG and what it does, but with you being here and my people in potential risk from whatever you found, I think I deserve answers when you heal up." And then he left, the two guards behind him. Inside the room, the Onyx Guard stared at the ceiling, knowing whether or not it would be a good idea to trust the Stranded leader. Who would he tell? The UIR? They aren't faring much better than the COG. Other Stranded? These people weren't an army. If she could live up to her part of the bargain, then telling them would probably have no consequences. Unless Prescott was still alive, which was hard to believe since Azura had been taken by the Locust. Even if she got help, who would answer the call? Marcus Fenix? Yeah, right. Like he would help the Onyx Guard, but she was hopeful, and would take that bet once she was better.

Outside, Brendan stared at the geobot. There had been a squad of Onyx Guards on the island, and he hadn't known. Even with living here for nearly two years the world could still surprise him, even in the middle of nowhere. Just what where the Onyx looking for underground, and then there are the Locust. By the looks of things, the COG had found something that the Locust wanted to keep secret and the damn grubs tried their damnest to keep it quiet.

And it was all in the chrome machine that he held.

"Hey Fredrick, how's that Raven we have?" He asked the man next to him tinkering with a boomshot he scavenged. Fredrick was the camp's resident engineer and repairman, and was very stingy with whatever little supplies came their way in terms of spare parts. The Raven he was referencing was the one he found in the airfield. The COG must have simply forgotten about it.

"You mean the rustbucket flying machine? It's alright, I guess. I'm the only one who can fly it anyway. Why? You're not going back up the mountain again, are ya?" Fredrick asked. The Raven was a very hot topic with the Stranded. Many wanted the parts to make new tools and remove the weapons to help make new fortifications. Fredrick however, who was in charge of anything that involved vehicles and weapons, made sure that it was to be taken care of properly.

"I've got a female Onyx Guard who's going to lead us up there when she's back up on her feet. And yes, _female_ and _Onyx Guard_ are what I said, so keep your mouth shut. Don't want flies in your mouth when you've got a chopper to fly." Brendan said, and help up the geobot. "She was snooping around the mountain with this thingy, said the Locust were hiding something important."

"And what are you going to do, fight them?" Fredrick asked incredulously. "You couldn't even kill a wretch with your piss-poor aim. The Locust would tear you to bits."

"I'm not the one who's going to fight. She's going to show us what she found, and then that's it." Brendan said, quietly cursing Fredrick for calling out is aiming skills, or lack thereof. "Oh, and get Samuel to get the radios back online. I have a feeling that whatever she found, she'll want to tell someone."

 _-Elsewhere-_

"Look Damien! I'm a titan, here to eat you! Rawr!" The young girl laughed as she chased her friend through the forest, and the young boy in front of her was laughing as well. She held her arms up high, ready to grab the boy and pretend to eat him alive. They both knew that titans were no joke, but the world didn't revolve around the pain and misery of others. They just wanted to have fun, and then grow up to deal with the real world.

"Oh no! Wait, I'm a Scout! I'll slice your neck!" The boy Damien yelled back and pretended to soar across the forest with make-believe ODM gear. He held out his hands, as if clutching real swords, and proceeded to whack his friend with the pretend swords. She collapsed, and fell down face-first into the dirt, making steam waves with her fingers above her body.

"I'm dead, and you're the hero again Damien!" The girl laughed loudly, practically drowning the whole forest with her voice. Damien laughed alongside her.

"Hey Sophia, maybe next time I'll be the titan. The sun's getting down, let's go home." Damien lifted Sophia off the ground, the orange sky giving them a rather beautiful view of the forest. The two friends started walking back, but then heard a small noise.

 _Ticktickticktick_

"Hey, Damien. You hear that?" Sophia asked her friend, who had also heard the strange ticking noise. Damien stopped to look around, trying to home in to the source of the noise. He figured it was just their imagination or some animal mating call, but as he turned to walk away he heard it again.

 _TICKTICKTICKTICK_

"Damien, it's getting louder!" Sophia cried out, now scared of the strange noise. Damien was scared too, never in his life had he heard such a noise. It was unlike anything, and if it was related to the new noise, the scurrying of small arms on the ground, then it was indeed getting closer.

"DAMIEN!" Sophia screeched, and pointed to what was in front of her. It was a small, gray creature with a large ovular beak, with skinny appendages that ended with black talons. It was constantly shaking, and making the ticking noise that they heard earlier. It also had no eyes.

"What is that?" Damien whispered, shaking with fear. The creature must have heard him, or at least the spare change in his pocket, because it focused its eyeless gaze on him and shrieked. Damien screamed as the monster lunged, its razor-sharp limb raking Damien's pocket, scattering his allowance all over the ground. Damien tried to grab his allowance, but the creature's sharp talons lunged, and he just narrowly almost had his fingers cut off. Damien had to watch his allowance being _eaten_ by the monster as he was dragged away from the scene by Sophia.

"C'mon Damien! Let's get outta here!" Sophia yelled at her friend, who was crying at his allowance being devoured by the monster. Never had they seen a creature such as that in Wall Rose. Was that a creature bred from the titans? Whatever it was, the monster was busy eating the coins to not notice, nor care, about the fleeing children.

"Should we tell the Garrison?" Damien said through his tears. "I just lost three weeks of my allowance!"

"Damien, we'll tell them, but stop making me drag you! Get up you wimp!" Sophia yelled, and dragged her friend away, hopefully to never see a monster like that again.

How wrong they were.


	2. ACT 1: Lost and Found

_-CNV Sovereign-_

A wet day is a good day, the rain pattering against the dirt graced those who had strained to build the garden a boost in morale. The fact that food was becoming a scarce resource in the world was terrifying enough without the remnant Locust forces or the Lambent to worry about. But rain was always good. Imulsion can't spread in water and the Locust hate water, which makes living on the giant ship near the island of Vectes an even better solution for what remained of the COG.

For Dominic Santiago, it was still a living hell.

Following E-Day, he lost his sons. Two years ago, he had to kill his own wife. The Locust had taken everything away from him. All but one thing; Marcus, his closest friend. Once, Dom was fueled by the drive to find his wife, but now he could not see a bright future ahead of him.

Maria was his shining light, but now it was shut out with the bullet of a boltok pistol.

"Dom." The large Tyran soldier-turned-gardner looked to see Samantha Byrne walk up to him, holding a box full of seeds and plants. Samantha was always wary around Dom, and knew just how well the man was suffering. Since that day, or at least that's what Marcus told them, he had become a more withdrawn man, focusing on his gardening to try to forget about the pain. Dom had taken the life of his one love, and now he would forever live with that. It would be with him until the day he died.

Sam at least respected Dom, and the rest of the ship did as well. The man was deflated in terms of morale, but he was still the man that stood by Marcus Fenix and the rest of Delta, and now was practically in charge of everything that grew on the ship. The rain didn't seem to faze either of them.

"Hey Sam. What's that you got there?" Dom asked, his new interest perking at the box.

"Just some seeds that we bartered off from some Stranded. Nice people. Gave them a couple of our guns in exchange for some good stuff." Sam reached down and pulled out a really tiny bag, only the size of her finger. "Watermelon. Remember the last time you had that? And cauliflower. Good for your bones." Sam put the seeds back in the bag and gave it to Dom. She secretly wished that this would bring out more of the man, but it seemed fate was not on her side today.

"Thanks Sam." Dom took the small bag gently from Sam's hand and put it in one of his many pant pockets. "I'll plant this as soon as I can." He went back to digging with his shovel, leaving Sam saddened at his dismissive air. It seemed that there was no hope to cheer up, or even put a smile on Santiago's face. And with that, she promised that she would see him smile once, even if it meant the world.

"See you around Dom." Sam said, before walking back into the ship's hull via open staircase.

"See ya." He said, and began picking the last of the tomato plants that had grown last month. Seeing his work done, and a basket full of fruit and vegetables, Dom would have gone back down the same way Sam went were it not for someone to suddenly make himself known.

"Marcus!" Dom yelped, totally unsuspecting of his friend's sudden appearance. "You scared the crap out of me man. Tell me when you're gonna teleport on my ass."

Marcus Fenix, the one-man army and probably humanity's greatest hope against the Locust Horde, war veteran of the Pendulum Wars and Dom's best friend. Marcus was renowned as a hero on the _Sovereign,_ and rightly so. Had it not been for Marcus and the rest of Delta Squad, humanity would have kicked the can long ago. Stopping RAAM from using the Lightmass bomb on humanity, killing the massive riftworm and flooding the Hollow on top of a mutant brumak were all in a day's work for Marcus. But even with years of war tucked under his belt, Marcus wasn't faring better than most of the crew when it came down to living rather than surviving. His consistent nightmares were just a giveaway to what plagued the mind of the last Fenix.

He was wearing his armor, unusual since there hasn't been any sort of activity from either the lambent or the Locust for quite a while.

"I see Sam came by." Marcus wasn't really one for conversation, but knew when to make an exception with Dom.

"Yeah, gave me some bag full of seeds." Dom replied. "What's with the armor? We're not fighting Stranded again, are we?"

"Dom, Michaelson wanted me to get you, Carmine and Anya. Said that he got a message of sorts and wants us up on the captain's lodge. Let's go." Marcus nudged with his head towards the large tower at the back of the ship, and started walking there, Dom in tow.

"What sort of message?" Dom asked.

"Said some Stranded got a hold on one of us, says he's willing to share some critical information. Didn't say anything else other than it was an Onyx Guard he found on his island." Marcus explained to the increasingly curious Dom. "Yeah, kinda makes someone wonder what the hell's an Onyx Guard doing with some Stranded. Certainly not looking for the Holy Grail."

"Who knows, man. Aren't they the top-secret type? Y'know, classified missions and all that crap?" Dom said as he placed his tools back in the nearby shed.

"All the more reason to get this Guard. C'mon, let's get to Michaelson. It's going to be a long set sail if can't use any of the choppers."

...

Fredrick smacked the side of the geobot again, hoping to get into the stupid thing's archives and find out what the Onyx Guard was looking for. For some damn reason, he couldn't open it. Whether it was because it was in sync with the Onyx Guard's armor and he couldn't open it without her permission, or it was just a piece of scrap and the whole she-bang about the thing found in the underground was a load of hooey.

"Anything, Fred?" Fredrick turned his head to see one of his assistants, who was fiddling with a retro lancer, ask him about to geobot.

"Nothing. Can't even get the damn thing to light up." The bitter engineer spat, and rose up to exit his makeshift workshop. It was a large, open garage that he had retrofitted into a repair and forgery, able to fix weapons and with a decent supply of spare parts to share, it was a haven to the Stranded.

"I'm going to talk with little Miss Secret Shit. Keep the place open, it won't be long." Fredrick told his assistant, and then left the repair shop. After walking towards the hospital entrance, quick since the two places were right next to each other, he made a note to not berate the Onyx Guard, but to ask her nicely. If Fredrick could push himself to be nice.

The hospital seemed to be vacant, shocking for a Stranded outpost. Fredrick made his way to the room that held the Onyx Guard, and went inside to see that she was sitting on the edge of her bed, her helmet in her hands. Her armor must have been patched up from the day before, because the deep black was now pattered with slight grays. Her torn, tattered hair which must have blonde at one point was a mess, and her face was lined with many scars, with the largest two criss-crossing her face. Her pale blue eyes seemed to match her mood as she stared at the helmet's blue optics. Her slumped posture must have meant that she was now dealing with the aftermath of being the lone surviving Onyx Guard. He could sympathize with her. The loss of his own family had taken it's toll on him as well.

"Hey." Fredrick said, startling the woman. She quickly put the helmet back on to hide her face and turned to face the man.

"What are you doing here?" She asked quickly. Fredrick raised an eyebrow on his aging face.

"Gee, I don't know, checking up on the survivor? Like a decent human being? I know you COG don't do that, but here? We kinda like to build a good relation with our people." Fredrick explained to the Onyx Guard.

"I'm not one your people." She huffed back.

"You're human, ain't ya? You're not mumbling about killing groundwalkers or serving the Queen, are you? So yeah, you are kinda one of us." To a degree, he was right. But the Onyx was still a member of the COG, even if it was a dead government. He knew she would be obstinate about the whole ordeal, but Fredrick, even with a patience as minimal as his own he would try to kindle a relationship with her.

"Why are you here." She said plainly. Not one for discussion, was she?

"The geobot. It's not opening, so I came to you to see if you could." Fredrick gave the machine to the Onyx Guard. "I never got your name, woman."

"My name isn't important." She said as she tinkered with the geobot. After couple of seconds, the damn thing decided that she had the magic touch and opened. The hologram of the nearby mountain to the outpost's south, and the opening on the opposite side of the mountain. It stretched further down, towards what seemed a massive underground cave nearly filled with enough water to be an underground sea, almost half the size of the island above. Fredrick was shocked by the hologram, but saw that in the center of the cave there was a strange structure, octagonal in shape. It must have been huge to be picked up by the geobot and even then, it was in the middle of the sea on an island.

"So we have an island, with a sea, underneath an island. Alright." Fredrick gestured with a finger. "We should tell Brendan about this. No doubt he's already told them about you." Fredrick turned to leave, but turned to the Onyx Guard. "Well? C'mon. I see you've got yourself in check. Let's get you out of here."

"Fine." She said, and stood up to follow Fredrick. She put on her helmet to once again hide her face from the world.

"By the way, the name's Fredrick. I'd ask your's, but since you're Onyx I know that's not important." Fredrick talked to the Onyx Guard to his left, and saw that she was staring at him intensely through that black and blue helmet.

"Ashley. My name is Ashley. Ashley O'Malley." The Onyx Guard said her name, and Fredrick smiled at her.

* * *

 _-Forest, near Wall Rose-_

"You should have seen it! It was gray and hideous and it ate my allowance!"

"I'm sure you were just imagining something, Damien. Now, where's Sophia? Where is she? It's time for dinner."

"Mom, listen to me please!"

"Damien, there are no monsters in the woods. Mere child's stories that I told you when you were a wee baby."

Finding that his own mother wouldn't even believe him, Damien grunted and stormed off to find Sophia. Of course his mom wouldn't believe him. Who would, besides his best friend? Sophia had seen the monster and what it had done to Damien's pocket, but nobody else would. They told there was a monster in the woods to the Stationary Guard near the wall, but they just laughed it off and told the kids to "keep up the good stories". Damien had never been this frustrated in his life. He'd lost his allowance, had his favorite shirt torn and nobody wanted to believe him.

He and Sophia had returned to his house near the forest, and Damien was quick to replace his shirt. His parents had money for plenty of shirts, unlike those poor saps living near Wall Maria. He knew of the conditions there; people living in the streets, homes filled with families of rats rather than people, and beggars lined with muggers to steal what they can get. Damien knew that it was even worse underground, in that city beneath the earth.

"Sophia? Where are you?" Damien yelled as he walked upstairs to his room. Sophia would be in there, playing with his toys, like she had done many times before.

"I'm right here!" Sophia said back loudly through his door, and he opened to see Sophia drawing on one of his paper boards. The drawing was a crudely scrawled picture of the gray monster they encountered in the woods. Damien could see the beak and the thin legs, but it's body was too fat and he distinctly remembered that it had no eyes.

"You're drawing the monster?" Damien asked as he sat next to Sophia. If one could see, there was a blush on his face as she leaned in to explain.

"Yeah, because I'm sick and tired of hearing everyone say that we're liars. I'm gonna prove them wrong." Sophia finished the last line and held up her drawing. "You see? Once they see this, then they'll believe us." Sophia seemed pretty proud of her drawing, or maybe it was proving herself right to everyone else, including Damien.

"How do you know?" Damien had to ask. If words couldn't convince people, how could a drawing?

"Think about it, stupid. You really think that we'd imagine something like this?" Sophia explained to her friend. "No way."

"Nice. My mom wanted us to eat dinner." Damien sat up quickly to hide his blush.

"Was it her potato salad and fried beans?" Sophia asked ecstatically. Damien's mom made the best food in Wall Rose, at least in her opinion. Her potato salad and fried bean special was her top favorite. She was a growing girl, after all. Her parents couldn't afford good food since they were merchants in the town center. She lived some miles away from Damien's house, in the local neighborhood.

"Yeah, she's downstairs." Damien said, and was nearly barged out of the way when Sophia practically sprinted out his room and hurried down the stairs. "Sophia! You know my mom hates it when you run down the stairs!" The boy called out, and angrily went after his friend. The last time she did that, Damien's mom nearly spilled a whole crock of hot chicken noodle soup and had a fit. Damien abided to his mother's law without question, but Sophia, ever the rebel, still did it just to annoy Damien because it was always he who got in trouble. His mom would always demand that Damien try to get Sophia to follow the rules of the house, and he would have to stand there and listen to his mom chew him out while Sophia sneered at him in the background.

Damien waltzed down the stairs, not eager to have to listen his mom rage at him for Sophia's antics. He noticed from the candlelight that there was someone standing in the hallway, and it must have been Sophia since it was about the exact size of her. Damien found himself confused. Normally, she would have already eaten half of her dinner as soon as Damien even put his foot in the dining room.

Glass shattered, and a horrific splat echoed in the house. Damien, wondering what happened, ran to his friend.

"Sophia?" He called out. "Are you okay?" He noticed that her shadow wasn't even moving, and as he rounded the corner he saw that she was just standing there, not moving a single muscle. Confused, Damien reached out to touch her.

"You okay?" He asked softly.

"D-Damien..." She sputtered, and pointed forward. Her finger trembled, as his eyes followed to where she led.

He saw the kitchen, with the pot of soup ready and boiling. The beans were placed on their plates, and the potato salad was ready in a large bowl. He also saw his mother. On the ground. Missing her head. Blood had splattered about everywhere in the room, forming a gruesome and terrifying scene. The little giblets that were spattered around were probably what remained of his mother's cranium.

If he had noticed, there was a hole in the window.

"...mom?" Damien's eyes began to water at the sight. His mom was dead.

And he would have wept were it not for the doors behind them to suddenly explode. Damien and Sophia were sent flying back, with him landing on one of his couches and Sophia smacking into a wall. Wood shards and splinters flew around the room, and dust that had been resting in the walls of his home were now offering a fine layer over the barely conscious boy. Damien weakly rose, and clutched his side in pain. A huge gash in his side, most likely from the impact of a wooden shard of the door, was leaking blood. Sophia wasn't doing too well either. Her forehead was smothered in her blood, and she had her eyes closed.

"S-Sophia! Ngh!" Damien tried to stand up, but the injury was crippling him. His hand reached for something to hold on so that he could rescue his friend from whatever had killed his mother and blown up the front of his house.

And then he saw it, emerging from the splintered front.

A massive creature, maybe about eight feet tall and with the body of a monster. It's footsteps thundered on the creaky floors. The creature's armor was red and black, with patches of glowing orange lights. It was hefting a gargantuan gun, far bigger than any musket. The monster's dull gray skin, covered in black scales, was not enough to hide it's beady red eyes, which were blazed with simple-minded rage. It turned it's head, tiny compared to the rest of it's barrel-shaped body, and locked eyes with Damien. The boy nearly wet himself in fear as the creature pointed the barrel of the gun at him and yelled.

" _Hominid!"_ The creature shouted, and Damien expected to die from whatever the creature had in store for him.

Only to realize that the creature was not alone. Two others flanked it, both smaller but still had that gray skin and strange armor. One of them had a deep black set of armor and was wielding what looked like a bow made of metal. The monster's helmet was open with a black glass where the eyes should be. A cape, dark gray with the emblem of some sort of cross, flapped in the wind. The other was even stranger, for it wore a pair of bright yellow goggles, red armor decorating its body and a long barreled rifle with a large scope near the stock.

"Human boy." The goggled one pointed at Damien, and the other with the black armor marched forward and grabbed the boy by the neck. The creature's immense strength nearly snapped his neck. He struggled for breath as the monster began walking out of his home. He saw the biggest one grab Sophia, still unconscious, and drag her out as well by the gut.

"Subjects found." The black armored monster spoke to seemingly no one. After a few seconds, it spoke again. "Human boy and girl. Young. Good for testing."

Before Damien could think about what it meant by testing, the one with the goggles then grabbed what looked like a strange cylinder from outside, filled with a glowing yellow light. It placed it near the kitchen, and pressed a button on the top which triggered some sort of beeping, because after he had been dragged out into the dark with the monsters, the cylinder exploded, taking Damien's house with it in a massive fireball. The goggled one and the huge one laughed at the sight, and the black armored one simply hissed at them, probably to keep them in line.

No mother. No home. And Damien began to realize that there was also no hope for him as well.


	3. ACT 1: Greetings, Part I

_-Stranded Outpost-_

"Ah, Fredrick, good to see you. And you too, Ms. Onyx. I'm damn well happy to see you're up and at 'em." Brendan smiled as he stood among his fellow survivalists in what appeared to be a control room of some sorts. The Stranded were working with what they could, which wasn't so bad.

Though half the screens were cracked and most of the keyboards were either broken or had missing keys, Ashley saw that they were working hard on... _Something._ The Onyx Guard made sure to take mental notes on everything she saw.

It would be helpful once she was reunited with the rest of the COG on the _Sovereign._

"We've discovered what the Onyx battalion was doing here on the island; apparently there's some sort of structure buried below the mountain on some underground lake." Fredrick explained as he gave the geobot to Brendan. The Stranded leader saw the flickering holograms of the island, and the massive machine that sat inside. Brendan stared at the hexagonal structure of the machine, wondering how something could exist on the island under his nose for so long.

"And it's never occurred to you people to explore where you live?" The Onyx Guard popped up and Fredrick turned to glare at her.

"And end up like your friends? Thanks but no thanks. Better to be oblivious than dead." Fredrick quipped and the Onyx Guard nearly slugged the man in the jaw but was held down by two burlier stranded. If she had her former strength, she could have taken everyone in this dump, but granted she survived a massive gunfight a couple days ago, she wasn't feeling top notch.

"Easy, woman." Brendan warned. "Fredrick, is the chopper ready?"

"Oh it is, hopefully we'll be able to fly without coming to pieces in the air." Fredrick mumbled. The chopper itself was heavily rusted but most of the parts had been replaced over time. Even then, Fredrick was still uneasy about flying in the "airborne garbage can". He still had a life to live, even if it was a simple one.

The Onyx Guard shrugged off her restrainers. "We should get going immediately. We merely scouted the outer perimeter and didn't encounter any sort of Locust resistance. We were attacked by a tribe of savages, unlike typical Locust armies."

"So you're saying that you were all killed off by shit luck?" Fredrick asked. "When the boys came back with you, they saw a couple dead brumaks."

"Some survived the flooding, so what?" Ashley said to him, "And if they did manage to hang onto a couple of those massive monsters, there's bound to be more."

"We'll go for it then." Brendan clutched a fist and readied a rusted boomshot. "If there are brumaks and leftover locust down in the cave, we'll deal with them."

"Well then. Let's head out."

…

"What a view." Fredrick said from the cockpit, eyeing the scenery of the massive forest that decorated the entire mountainside as the Raven flew over the lands. The ride would be long, but their target would be easy to find.

"It should be just behind that peak," Ashley pointed her returned lancer at the second mountain, where there seemed to be a systematic removal of trees around the top.

"Looks like someone's been doing a little logging. Could use the trees for lumber." One of the other stranded said. Brendan had brought along others along with Ashley and Fredrick. Fredrick had protested, since he clearly thought that riding this helicopter was going to be the death of him.

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it was the locust." Fredrick said mostly to himself, but also to answer the stranded's question.

"We should land there, it'll be a quick walk towards the caves and from there we can secure the structure." Ashley spoke up and pointed towards the large open area.

"Speaking of which, just what the hell is that giant hexagon?" Brendan turned his attention to the Onyx Guard standing behind him. Everyone was curious to just what was the real purpose behind the structure, or what it might serve a purpose for.

"Some time ago, Command picked up a massive read-up of energy from the mountain years before Jacinto sank. We thought it was just the stranded doing something with imulsion, but we began to realize that whole locust armies that had been crawling on our asses for some time, just vanished in thin air." Ashley explained, no longer caring about protocol. This was a whole new world and a whole new situation. "So even after the COG had all been dismantled, Prescott decided that he had to send down an Onyx platoon, the last of us, down into that damn mountain."

"Looks like the locust had the same idea." Fredrick said as the helicopter descended.

"But it doesn't make sense. We ran into that locust army by _accident._ We had no idea what forces we were going to fight. A boomer and a couple drones, sure. But a pair of brumaks and a siege beast? Half of us were dead before the battle started." Ashley gripped the side of the helicopter tightly, those memories coming back to haunt her.

"Man, that sucks." One stranded, some stringy boy with a boltok sighed out. "We could use more badasses like you."

Ashley looked back at the boy and smiled through her helmet. At least someone here treated her with a little pride, even if it was a stranded kid. The helicopter lowered itself into the massive hole where the device was seemingly located in the mountain lake. The sunlight allowed the stranded and the Onyx Guard to see inside the cave, where a small flat outcrop of rock was big enough to support the helicopter.

And there it was, huge and colored a deep black. The hollow hexagon was supported on a pyramid of long, wide steps that led up to the cusp of its lower entrance. From what they could see, there was a bridge of stone connecting the outcrop and the island.

And no locust.

That sent very bad vibes in Ashley's spine. The fact that there were no locust around to try and get a headshot on them only sent worse signals to her and her group.

"Where are they?" Fredrick mumbled to himself.

"Either hiding, or waiting for us to make the first move." Ashley said, her lancer switching to full auto. "Brendan, come with me. The rest of you stay here. If anything happens, we'll need you to get out and alert the COG Remnants." Ashley ordered around the stranded, some who were none too happy to leave the massive cave. Fredrick, before heading back to the helicopter, took a final look at the two heading down to the device. He wondered just what they were going to find down there, and if it were a good idea to send only two of them down to the hexagon.

Brendan was also having worrying thoughts. Even if she was keen to go down and investigate the device, she had no idea of what she was jumping into. While she was still COG, she was a human being and he would gladly take her over any locust. She had the skills and the reliance of a real soldier. To lose her would be a waste of human life and great potential.

"Ashley. Wait up." Brendan offered, his snub pistol raised so that he wouldn't be caught off-guard by anything. Even with no locust around, Brendan wasn't taking any risks.

"Keep up." She simply responded, "I'm tired of waiting."

"But you don't even know what that thing'll do!" Brendan argued, trying to keep up with the far younger and healthier Onyx Guard. The fact that they had her out of a pile of corpses just a couple days ago clinging to life, and now she was almost running to across the bridge to get to the giant hexagon.

"Of course I don't; that's why I'm telling you to hurry up." She said, or demanded from Brendan's point of view. How someone could be this active after being pulled out of a warzone, he would never knew. For all he knew, she was part locust, or even part brumak. "I'm here because we need to know what it does, and why the locust might be using it for something."

As Ashley reached the device, she could see that right in front of the device, at the ridge of the mouth, lay a panel that stuck up from the floor, plant-like and adorned with a multitude of buttons layed out in a curvy keyboard style. The keys had a language that she had never seen, like something out of a science fiction novel, or the comics she used to read when she was a kid.

"Ashley, don't touch anything." Brendan said, like a father scolding a child. If the locust were here, then there was good reason to be caution. Ashley seemed to only care about what this giant thing was supposed to do, or even be.

"Hush, stranded. I'm doing something." Ashley scolded the caution man. While he was searching around the stony island, Ashley had decided that the keyboard needed attention, and so she walked up the pyramid.

Her lancer slung on her back, she noticed that the keyboard lit up as soon as she was about a meter away from it, further drawing confusion from her. The device seemed to be both ancient and advanced at the same time, something beyond of both human and locust technologies.

 _Just who or what put this here?_ Ashley wondered as she brushed her hand across the keys, only to realize that it was holographic, something that only the most advanced science labs had created just years before the war sent the world into a dark age. She was astounded. If only the COG found this before the locust did then it might have been the turning point of the war, or at least could have helped the COG.

A sudden crack of energy, and Ashley whipped out her lancer in shock. It came to her that it was the giant device that was making those noises. Loud, booming, and powering up for something.

"Ashley!" Brendan yelled at the Onyx Guard. "What did you do?"

"I merely flicked the keyboard, that's it! This stupid machine is probably so damn old it must've gotten confused or something." Ashley tried to find a viable answer, but was drawn to the rivers of yellow light that were snaking upwards and onto the hexagonal shape. A sphere made of darkness and thunder was growing in the middle of the device, slowly gaining size. The sounds that the machine was making was also increasing in volume, the tempo ever gaining.

"What in the world?" Brendan raised an eyebrow as the ball of lightning touched the mouth of the hexagon. As the two forms touched, there seemed to be a sudden influx of tranquility. The sounds stopped. The crackling was no more, and all that was left was the calm, blue-green sheen of light that had opened up.

"Holy hell." Ashley whispered to herself, and walked towards the flexing light, as if drawn like a moth to a candle. Her hand raised up touch it, but found that it couldn't be touched; her hand simply _went through._ And she noticed that her hand wasn't sticking out the other side, it had just gone through.

"It's a portal. A gigantic portal." Brendan awed at the sight of it. Ashley pulled her arm back and was relieved to see that her hand hadn't fallen off. "This is like something out of a comic book. I wonder where it leads to."

"Who knows, but whatever this thing is, the rest of us need to know. Brendan, get back to the chopper and tell them what we found. I'm going to have a look around." The Onyx Guard ordered, but was stunned to see Brendan pointing his pistol at her, his face etched in utter fear. His hand trembled, a cold sweat breaking out on his face as he readied his pistol at her. As she reeled her lancer to blow away Brendan before he did something stupid, she realized that with growing horror, that he wasn't pointing at her.

He was pointing _behind her._

"ASHLEY!" Brendan screamed, but it was too late.

A gargantuan human hand had slipped out of the portal. This thing, whatever it was, had taken both of them both by such shock that Ashley did nothing as the hand's thick fingers coiled around her, and dragged her towards the portal! Ashley tried to move, or start her chainsaw bayonet, but it was to no avail. She neared the swirling portal of myriad colors and ducked as bullets whizzed around her and looked back to see Brendan firing his pistol like a maniac. She knew that those bullets wouldn't be able to save her.

"Brendan!" Ashley cried out mere meters before the portal. "Don't waste your ammo, just warn the others!"

"What about you?!"

"Forget me, just make sure you get the geobot to Fenix! The codes are Echo-4-Sunder-Nine!" Ashley grunted, the thumb of the massive hand pressing against her spine. "That's an order!"

And with that, she and the hand were gone.

Brendan watched, with sudden fear, as the portal's mouth began to flex and bubble, sending the whole chasm into a quake. And taking Ashley's words to heart, Brendan ran as fast as he could as the portal began to destabilize, crossing over the stone bridge as the hexagon began to collapse in on itself, drawing closer and closer together until there was nothing but a small hole.

Brendan has just made it out of the cave before the portal erupted in a flash of white, blasting him away towards the Raven and the crew that waited him. They too seemed startled by the sudden explosion and the lack of a certain black-armored woman. Fredrick was the first to get to the winded Stranded leader as the explosion died down.

"What happened? Where's Ashley?!"

"Something took her!" Brendan said, after a series of coughing fits. "And then the whole fucking thing exploded!"

"What do you mean," Fredrick pressed, " _something TOOK her?!"_

...

Ashley was-IS an Onyx Guard. Years of fighting the Locust and their terrible beasts of war had taught her that the world is a brutal place, and that surprises were things that got you killed in the battlefield. And yet, as she was dragged through a tunnel of white by a giant human hand, of course she was taken by surprise! This had been one of the last things that she had expected, right next to unicorns and dragons coming alive.

A flash, and she was suddenly being hoisted upwards, and opened her eyes to see one of the most grotesque things she had ever seen; a massive, fifteen-feet tall human, utterly naked and with a mouth that almost went from ear to ear. It's head covered in tattered brown hair, the massive thing's eyes were tiny, as if the face had made up space on purpose for the giant maw. It also had a rather nasty case of beer belly, almost spherical.

"Um. Hello?" Ashley tried communicating, as if this monster had intelligence.

It responded by lifting Ashley above it's mouth, and opened.

"NO, AH FUCK!" Ashley screamed as the creature placed her in its thumb and forefinger, but gave Ashley a chance to escape. She gripped her lancer and fired at the creature's face. The bullets made quick work, slicing through it's hot flesh, and dropped her right into it's mouth and swallowed whole.

Acting quick, she slammed the razor-sharp teeth of her lancer right into the creature's throat and slid down towards the stomach, leaving a gaping internal wound that vented a thick, hot steam. Ashley, covered in blood, coughed some out and fell into the digestive juices of the creature's belly. She stood up, and thanked herself that it was quite shallow to begin with, but noticed that to her horror she wasn't the only person in the gut of this beast; a young man, already partially digested, eyed the black armored woman. This only seemed to anger the Onyx Guard even further.

"I didn't come this far to become fuckin' BREAKFAST!" She roared, and fired her lancer wildly at the gut, causing little pockets of blood to gush out and fill the stomach cavity.

"You'll... die..." The eaten man said softly, and she heard it. She turned to see that he had spoken just before sinking into the abyss of the stomach, a sad sight indeed.

A snort, "Maybe, but I'm making sure I go down- huh?" The glow of red that the stomach gave allowed the woman to notice that not only was there more humans, but also more weapons. Through the disgusting mess, she saw what looked like to be a double-barreled shotgun floating on a melted torso and a frag grenade stuck to the creature's gut by hardened juices. If she wasn't panicking about being digested, she would have wondered just how these weapons got here. But for now, all she did was crack a smile.

Maybe she wasn't going to die here after all.

...

"YAHOOOOOO!" Sasha Braus screamed at the top of her lungs as she whizzed through the forest at speeds no creature in the walls could hope to achieve. And while she knew that zipping around at such speeds would have a chance of getting herself killed, and make Instructor Shadis beyond infuriated, but right now she just wanted to have a little bit of fun, like she did back at her village. Connie Springer, the poor sap who was paired with the endless bundle of energy that was Sasha, was barely keeping pace. He knew that Shadis would tear him a new one if he was caught walking back to camp with empty canisters.

"Sasha wait!" Connie cried out, hoping to get her attention. "We're supposed to be practicing our Maneuver Gear back with the others!"

Sasha hooked a tree and came to jarring stop that she rode with style, swinging upwards, back and then pressing the release of her gas to make sure she stopped just before inertia caught her. She turned to see her friend stop right next to her with sweat and a couple of leaves on his face.

"C'mon Connie, those guys know we're not going too far! Besides," She leaned in close, pressing herself to Connie's smaller body, "we could do some hunting, get some meat..." Sasha drooled at the thought of having delicious meat in her mouth again, the savory goodness enough to make her forget her (almost) endless hunger. Connie rolled his eyes.

"And have Shadis take it?" Connie snarked, only for Sasha to grab his collar and bring his face close to her's.

"NEVER! It's _mine. Mine! My shiny!_ " Sasha was frothing at the mouth as she slobbered all over Connie's face, who had tried to back up as far as he could from her vicious raging, only to realize that there was something moving behind Sasha. If his memory served correctly from their anatomy classes, the thing that was waltzing over to both of them was a-

"TITAN!" Connie screeched like a frightened ferret along with Sasha, the two holding each other as the Titan doubled over and vomited a waterfall of blood. The two must have noticed that this titan, however it got here, was having some sort of internal problems. A horrible groan came from it's mouth as more blood began to pool and bubble from the lips, swaying back and forth like a drunkard through the streets of nighttime. Sasha noticed that the skin near the bulging belly was pocketed with little splotches of red, like internal wounds of some sort.

"What's wrong with it?" Connie asked Sasha, both of whom wanted to get away from the titan as far as possible.

"I-I-I don't k-know!" Sasha whimpered as she gripped Connie harder, and he did the same. "I'm not a fucking titan whisperer!"

The titan fell against a tree, trying to stand upright. Its legs seemed to have nearly given out from beneath its hideous body and turned its head to the two trainees, who both let out an "EEP!" as the titan noticed them. And right before it could have done anything-

 _ **KRA-POW!**_

-the titan's gut _exploded._ Torn muscle and blood oozed out like a landslide from the dying titans body, as it slowly slid down to the earth, let out one last gasp of air, and died collapsing on its side. Sasha and Connie had no idea what the titan had done, or where it came from, but the fact that this strange series of events was only getting stranger, the two decided that they should at least watch and see if the titan was really dead.

After all, the nape hadn't been touched.

But when the skin began to disintegrate, the both knew that the titan was a goner.

"That was odd." Connie said, lowering himself so that he was on the ground and unhooked his grapples to get a closer look at the dead titan and was mindful of the cascading blood and guts. Sasha landed behind him, who seemed to be saddened about how the titan died. Connie noticed this with a grain of salt.

"Oh c'mon, don't tell me you feel sorry for this monster!"

"I can't help it!" She cried out, "You know how horrible that must be, drowning in your own blood?"

"It's a hell of a lot better than what the titans do to us!" Connie argued, to which Sasha noticed something moving in the decomposing gut of the large titan.

"Ohmygosh Connie, someone's still alive!" Sasha pointed to the gaping hole, and much to his and her unbelief, there was indeed a person climbing out of the steaming corpse of the titan! By the looks of things, the person was still in one piece and very much intact! Connie's eyes glimmered with hope as he launched himself to the person crawling from the horrible wound. He made sure to get a good spot, as the person seemed to be a little on the weak side, probably the horrible aftermath of being eaten alive.

"Don't worry, I'm here to help!" The first thing Connie noticed about this person was that it was a woman, based on the curvy figure, and she was covered head to toe in a strange set of black armor, and wielding a weapon both on her back and in her hand that neither of them had ever seen. As she turned her head upwards, what greeted the young lad was a pair of bright blue eyes, like that of an insect. The steam billowing on her body seemed to calm down, but Connie had trouble lending a helping hand with all the gross blood on her. The woman stood up slowly, revealing that she was indeed taller than him, and maybe even taller than Shadis! Those burning blue eyes locked down on his far smaller body, her own body tense and the strange weapon clutched in her hand.

"Um, hello?" Connie said to her, waving a hand to her. "T-The name's Connie, Connie Spring-!"

That was as far as he got before she socked him dead in the mouth, sending him flying from the corpse and the seemingly estranged woman. Connie was out like a light the moment he hit the ground.

"Connie!" Sasha cried out, and felt something press against the side of her head.

 _Chk-CHK!_

"Who are you?" Sasha realized that the voice speaking to her, was the same woman that knocked out Connie with a single punch. How she managed to sneak up on her, let alone get that close in that short amount of time, scared Sasha. The rifle, or whatever it was, was lined right with her temple. She managed to move her head just enough so that she could be able to look the black-armored woman in her blue eyes.

"S-S-Sasha Braus." She said very quietly, afraid that her bladder would lose control if she stood here much longer.

"Where am I?" The woman asked, her voice lined with frustration, and Sasha noticed that it was directed not at her, but to the woman herself. Sasha found herself to be in disbelief that whoever this crazy lady was didn't know where she was in the walls.

" **TELL ME!** " The woman thundered with startling rage, and Sasha bit back tears to try and talk to the woman without getting her head blown off.

"You're in Wall Sina! WALL SINA! P-PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!" Sasha sobbed out, her tears flowing freely. Suddenly, the woman's weapon lowered back down and locked onto her back. Sasha was too busy sobbing to notice that the woman had dropped her aggressiveness. Maybe pointing a weapon at a child was a stupid idea.

"Hey." Sasha bit back a sniffle. "Hey, kid. Look, I was just little angry, alright. I'm sorry I punched your friend, so stop crying. I wasn't going to kill you anyway." The black armored woman's voice was smoother and far more comforting than what it was but still had that tense angry edge to it. Sasha stopped crying to notice that the woman had gone over to Connie's unconscious body to try and wake him up. She shook his head a couple times, but got nothing. So she opted for the next best thing; kicking him.

 _whack!_

"OW!" Connie sprung up to clutch his side, and then held his mouth. The lady he tried to rescue certainly had a right hook, if his throbbing lip told him anything. And seeing her loom over him, Connie yelped and tried to crawl away but she grabbed his collar and lifted him to his feet, brushed his shoulders and patted his cheek.

"Sorry for that." She didn't sound sincere.

"Y'know, you can't just go around and punch people!" Connie argued with her, and she turned around to pick up something on the ground. Her other weapon had fallen off. Rather than it being a long, blocky weapon with what looked like teeth under the barrel, this thing was short, barely long than her arm. The two barrels on the weapon was its most noticeable feature. She clicked something on the weapon and it split open to reveal that the barrels opened at the back, and then put them back.

"Still got some shots in..." She mumbled to herself.

"So, who are you?" Sasha asked, trying to get a conversation going. "I've never seen black armor like that, or guns with teeth."

The woman in black chuckled to Sasha, "You stranded sure are funny. By the way, the name's Ashley. Ashley O'Malley. I'm an Onyx Guard?" She gestured to her armor as if expecting Sasha to know what an 'Onyx Guard' was. The look of befuddlement on both of their faces showed that they were totally in the dark about what this newcomer was saying. Ashley groaned to herself.

"Y'know, the COG? Coalition of Ordered Governments? The Locust War? E-DAY?" Everything she said was going completely over their heads. It was as if they hadn't even been there, or heard of it in the first place.

"Lady, what the hell are you talking about? COG? E-Day?" Connie questioned the woman's sanity. "Maybe that titan hit your head before it ate you."

"That's what they're called? Titans?" Ashley asked, and Connie's and Sasha's mouths dropped. How could this woman not know what the titans were? "I just thought it was some form of super-lambent, or whatever. By the way, you guys got a radio, or something?" The number of things this woman was talking about; radio and lambent and _not knowing what Titans were_ was starting to get to the two trainees. Could this woman be from beyond the walls, and just so happened to get eaten and clawed her way out? With that armor and those weapons, it seemed like a plausible answer.

Connie decided to just go along with it.

"Sorry lady, no radio, or whatever that is." Connie shrugged. "Why don't you come with us to our camp? We got food, shelter and other people you can confuse with your crazy talk." Connie said and activated his ODM Gear, launching upwards. The woman tracked every move, seemingly astounded by the device's maneuverability. "You're gonna have to walk there! It's one mile thataway!" Connie pointed left as he left his friend and the strange woman.

"Can I trust the rest of you stranded?" Sasha nodded to Ashley as the woman placed her weapons on her back and started to walk.

Many questions rang in both their minds. For Sasha, it was so odd that this woman didn't know what a titan was, or where she even was. If she had been from beyond the walls, then they must have heard about the recent attacks on their lands, had they not? And just what were those weapons, and the armor she wore? In Ashley's mind, more questions raged. Just where was she? What are titans, the walls, and how could they not know the Locust War?

Ashley vowed to get to the bottom of this.


	4. ACT 1: Greetings, Part II

_-Unknown world-_

Ashley O'Malley has had to deal with so much crap in her life, be it E-Day, fighting the locust horde and their terrible beasts of war, and the constant battles she fought where so many of her friends and family died scraping away victories and defeats. Her career as an Onyx Guard wasn't all shiny and cool like she thought it was when she herself was a meager cadet. Come to think of it, most of her time during the Locust War was mostly her trying not to get herself killed. All this walking was allowing for some precious introspective moments, a rare commodity for someone from Sera.

There were, however, constant interruptions.

"Hey crazy lady in black!" Her attention was thrown upwards by the boy without any hair on his head. "Wanna keep up?"

"It would be easier if you had a car, or something." Ashley mumbled to herself, and watched as Sasha did a loop-de-loop on one of the huge branches. Ashley couldn't remember a time where she saw children being happy, or trees this tall. Some of the UIR were tropical nations, maybe they had some sort of forest of giant trees. Ashley could only guess what this place had in store for her.

Maybe she wasn't even on Sera anymore. That was a terrifying thought.

Another thing; just where did these kids get their toys? Those insane grapples fascinated her. Were they some sort of special forces that had been unknown to both the COG and the Locust? Who manufactured them? Just how did they function? Were they effective against the Locust, or were they just made for some sort of fun?

"If you must know, they're called ODM Gear." Connie noticed that she was staring at both of their devices thoroughly, even through her helmet. "Omni-directional movement. Basically wherever we point and shoot, we go."

"That's pretty damn cool." Ashley said as they entered a clearing, both of the kids landing beside her. Ashley could see that this was some sort of training grounds, as there were other teens wearing the same uniforms as Sasha and Connie, doing all sorts of military exercises. Some were testing their ODM gear, others were practicing moves on sandbags like punching, kicking or just doing something that would help them. Ashley was impressed. Normally the stranded folks were inept, slow and scavenged a living, but unlike the island and here in this strange place they were doing something to keep themselves occupied. A large lake was nearby, with more of the forest stretching towards the outer shores.

"Here it is. Our training grounds." Connie said, taking in the sight. "Home sweet home. C'mon, I'll introduce you to the others."

"I can see there are more of you." Ashley noted as she and the two teens walked forward. As they entered the camp, those who caught sight of Connie, Sasha and the strange lady in black armor stood agape and stared in wonder. Slowly, the sounds of shuffling feet and dirt scrounging were silent as Ashley stood in front of a cabin. Taking note of the silence, she turned her head and noticed that _everyone_ was staring at her. Most of them seemed about Connie and Sasha's ages, around their mid-teens. Some were tall, like the boy who was sweating profusely, and others were small as Ashley saw a petite blonde girl who looked like she had descended from the heavens with her good looks. And yet they said nothing.

She scoffed and entered, taking mental notes not to trust any of these crazy stranded.

"Connie, who the hell was that?" Said bald-headed dork turned to see two of the Shinganshina trio standing behind him, and based on the voice it must have been Eren, resident titan hater and one of the most emotional characters in the whole squad. The boy had reason to be slightly annoyed, the fact with bringing a total stranger into their camp like it was no problem.

"Oh, black armor lady? That's Ashley O'Malley, an _Onyx Guard._ " Connie emphasized his point by smirking and wiggling his hands at Eren, to portray this newcomer Ashley as some sort of mystery awaiting to be solved. Eren's confusion only went higher, and he wasn't alone.

"What's an Onyx Guard?" Armin Arlert, Eren's best friend, asked. He was more or less interested by the fact that nobody really knew who she was, even Connie, who seemed to have found her with Sasha.

"Beats me." Connie shrugged. "We found Ashley carving her way out of a dead titan. And then she hit me hard. _Really hard._ And then she was talking all this crazy stuff, like cogs and radios, and she didn't even know what a titan was! She called them "Lumbert" or something like that." As Connie told the story, and his comrades were only getting more and more confused and intrigued at the same time, the Onyx Guard that he was so clearly talking about was busy getting herself something to eat. Thankfully she had wandered off and discovered that further down there was a kitchen area of the cabin. Smiling as she took off her helmet, Ashley found a place to sit and took some loaves of bread to munch down.

Ashley couldn't remember the last time she ate a piece of bread. Azura's food was always being divided, between her and the other Onyx Gaurds all they got were MRE's and the scientists got to eat steak and pasta. Her heart burned at the memory of those people, so smug, so happy that they were having a vacation on some resort while the rest of the world fought, starved and died.

In a way, she thought that she deserved the bread. She hadn't eaten anything in the past two days and she was _famished._ As her old instructor once said to her; _"An army can't run on empty tanks or empty guts!"_ She smirked. That mean old bastard taught her so much. As she finished taking her last bite of her fifth loaf, she went up and got a cup of water and then was probably going to head over to whatever cabin held the instructor to see if they had any sort of radio.

There wasn't a sink to be found, but there was a water tank with a nozzle. As she poured some refreshment, the shattering of plates echoed behind her. She quickly turned her head to see that someone had been clumsy enough to drop some plates. She eyed the broken things, and then turned her gaze up towards the girl who dropped them. Black hair, a short cut with a blood red scarf around her neck. Her ethnicity seemed out of place here, but Ashley was too busy wondering other things. Almost instantly the shock that the girl was showing was replaced by cool, formidable anger.

Mikasa had been washing the dishes and putting them back when had come across the newcomer. Instantly, her shock caused the tall pile of clean dishes to fall out of her hands and shatter on the floor. When she caught the woman's face, it revealed a multitude of scars lacing her face, tattered blonde hair and stormy eyes that glared at her. Whatever the reason, she wasn't going to let this newcomer see any sort of fear from her.

"Who are you!" She demanded, jutting a finger at Ashley's direction.

"Ashley. And you?" She said back.

It took a while for the girl to talk back. "Mikasa." Obviously, this young girl wasn't trusting of her.

 _Not one for talk, is she?_ Ashley thought to herself. _Probably doesn't like the COG._ "Well then, Mikasa, it's been nice meeting you and the others, even they haven't said a word to me, so I'm just gonna go, okay?" Ashley said and was about to walk out the door when they burst open to let in more cadets who had heard the commotion between Ashley and Mikasa. The Onyx Guard took note of all the characters that she was seeing, since everyone seemed to be slightly different in their own ways. A young lad with burning green eyes immediately sought out the black armored woman. He must have thought that Ashley had somehow attacked Mikasa.

"Just who the hell do you think you are?!" The boy raged at her, his green eyes burning with anger. "You can't just come in here and eat our food!"

Ashley laughed. Kids these days. "Didn't see your name on it, _boy._ Besides, it's only bread." She took another bite from the loaf in her hand, only making the kid angrier. "Easy stuff to bake, even an idiot could do it."

"It would be easier if there wasn't a shortage." Another boy with blonde hair a blue eyes answered her, talking to her with an affirmative yet gentle tone. Obviously, he wasn't trying to put himself in danger. "We're very short on land here, miss. Every loaf counts for us cadets in the training fields." From the looks of things at this camp, there seemed to be some sort of disarray.

"Oh." Ashley suddenly felt pretty guilty for eating their food without permission, especially in front of kids. Even if she was starving, it would've been a better idea to ask. "Forgive me. I haven't eaten anything solid in a couple days." The young lad could see that the woman was genuine.

"Just who are you, anyway? I've never seen armor like that." One lad, a bulky blonde with a large build, noted Ashley's Onyx armor. "The Military Police don't use armor, and certainly not the Corps or the Garrison. So, are you some sort of special guard for the king or what?"

As the kid talked, the Onyx Guard was having a mental recalculation. All this talk of corps and police and walls, maybe, _just maybe,_ she wasn't on Sera. Maybe the portal that they found on the island dropped her somewhere beyond the universe, like in one of her old comic books. It would make some sense. After all, nobody had ever seen or heard what the portals would do. All Prescott found was their locations across Sera, that's it. And if she was beyond Sera, then she would have to make sure that she wouldn't seem to suspicious towards these other humans. She cursed herself for slipping out information when she first met Connie and Sasha. Then again, she thought she was on Sera, and that they were stranded.

Ashley was beginning to realize that they weren't stranded. They had uniforms, symbols of corps and strange war devices to combat their own adversaries, called titans. Nothing like that existed on Sera. And if she truly wasn't on Sera, then the COG didn't exist here, so how could she say that she was part of a government that they had no idea exists in the first place? She could talk all she could about the COG because she was probably the only one from Sera here. Talk about liberation.

"I'm Ashley. To be honest, I'm from somewhere else." She answered wholeheartedly. She was indeed telling the truth.

"You mean... from beyond the walls?!" Sasha exclaimed, and everyone seemed to crowd around Ashley awaiting for her answer.

"Yes." Ashley admitted. The crowd let out a collective gasp of shock. Was it that impressive?

"Have you killed any titans?"

"What's it like outside the walls?"

"Do you live near the ocean?"

"Woah woah woah, one question at a time please." Ashley stuck her hands out to try and calm the excited crowd. Slowly, the group of young trainees stopped talking to listen to what Ashley had to say. Of course, their excitement was expected, after all it isn't every day that someone from beyond the walls just comes out of nowhere, into your camp and started talking about stuff that had only been legends. Ashley eyed a boy in the back with freckles and black hair, standing next to another who seemed to be in a bitter mood with a crop-cut.

"What's your village like?"

"Oh, I don't live in a village." Ashley laughed. She was born and raised in Jacinto, before it sank into the Hollow. "I came from a city, filled with people like me."

"Then there's bound to be more of you! That's great!" He cheered, unwillingly bringing back painful memories for the Onyx Guard. Ashley visibly sunk, and with that she had answered his own future question without both of them talking.

"There aren't more of you, are there?" The blonde said.

"No. I'm the last of my kind." Ashley somberly said. The last of the Onyx Guards, stranded quite literally in uncharted territory. No COG, no Sera, nothing. A whole new world. But that also meant no locust, no lambent! And then she remembered the titan that ate her, and she knew that if these people were training to fight against them, then there must be far more than just the one she encountered. "I'm called an Onyx Guard, special operations units for missions that don't exist. I've been in service for almost a decade now, fighting for my people and my country, the COG." The more words she used, the more entranced the trainees were. Once again, freckles spoke up.

"The COG?"

"Coalition of Ordered Governments." Ashley answered.

"How'd you get here?" The blonde asked.

"Long story." _Definitely not telling them about the portals. Or the locust. Don't want them more scared of me._ "Look, could I speak to whoever's in charge here? I'd rather not be an unwelcome visitor here in... where the hell am I?" Ashley wondered. These talks of walls and titans have gotten her all confused. If there were titans, why aren't they here? And where are these walls that they keep talking about?

"You're behind Wall Sina, in a training camp some miles away from the walls."

"Ah." Ashley said, somewhat annoyed that this wasn't a noted location on the map. "I got a quick question for the rest of you; if these walls safeguard you from the titans, how come one caught me in the forest behind your camp? Are the walls incomplete or do titans exist everywhere?"

The trainees all looked at each other in horror. Ashley noticed that her mentioning of the giant that tried to digest her must have spooked all of them. They must have known, or at least assumed, that this place was safe from their titan threat. The Onyx Guard huffed to herself. If there were any chinks in the armor of an enemy, someone would exploit it. Perhaps the titan crawled over the walls? Ashley hadn't even seen any sort of walls so she must assume they must be tall enough to keep most titans out, hence the one that grabbed her while she was still on her home world. Or maybe they weren't, she didn't know.

"There aren't supposed to be any titans behind the walls!" One of the trainees said angrily, the kid with the crop cut gray-brown hair. He wasn't yelling at Ashley, but rather towards the general crowd.

"I know that, Jean!" Sasha said back.

"Then why the hell didn't you tell us?"

"I did tell you!" Sasha yelled, who looked like she was on the verge of tears.

"God _fucking_ dammit." Jean, the angry kid, rubbed his hand through his hair in frustration. "Just when I thought this damn place couldn't get any worse."

 _Ticktickticktick_

Instantly, Ashley placed her helmet on her head and whipped out her lancer. After hearing that sound, she instantly knew that would indeed get worse. There was only one creature she knew that made that dreaded noise. The rest of the cadets were startled by both the noise and the sudden action of the strange woman in front of them, who was aiming her huge rifle around the room. Strangely, she was pointing at the floor, as if something was going to pop out and attack.

"What the hell was that." The green-eyed kid whispered. The group clung together, but the Onyx Guard stood alone, slowly advancing forward. Then she spoke.

"All of you, get outside."

The silent, foreboding tone that she used was enough to raise the hairs of everyone else. Her flashlight activated, pointing towards the less lit parts of the dining hall.

"What's going on?" Blondie whispered.

"Don't want to find out." Connie said and decided to take Ashley's advice and head towards the door. He wasn't alone, as nearly all of the other cadets followed him into the safe warmth of the outside. The only ones who lagged behind were blondie and Sasha. Ashley wasn't going to take any chances with these kids, but seeing two of them staying behind instantly got on her nerves.

"Listen, blondie, you're smart right?" She said harshly, "Get Sasha out of here, now. And tell everyone that **nobody** is allowed inside until I say you can. Got it?"

"How can we trust you?"

Ashley raised an eyebrow. "Would _you_ rather find out what made that noise?"

Blondie was quiet.

"Didn't think so."

"C'mon Armin, let's get outta here." Sasha grabbed blondie, now revealed as Armin, and dragged him outside.

...

Outside, the rest of the trainees were talking to themselves. What was that strange woman babbling about? Why did she order everyone outside? Granted, that noise that they heard was pretty scary and nobody wanted to know what made it, but to leave her behind and alone in there? Something didn't add up.

"Where's Ashley?" As soon as Armin and Sasha stepped out, Eren was there to ask.

"She's inside. She doesn't want anyone else coming in." Armin told Eren, and made sure that his voice was heard.

"Great. Of course this happens during lunchtime." Jean whined again. "Why are we even listening to that crazy lady anyway? For all we know she could be feeding us lies about herself." Jean had a right to worry. Newcomers were generally untrustworthy because of their affiliation towards an outside force, and that put many people's nerves on edge. If this Ashley was indeed from beyond the walls as she said she was, then Jean had every right to be skeptical of the woman. If he was going to get to the Military Police then he would need to fit the criteria and fit in with his future branch.

"Even if, I'd rather it be her than us going to find out what made that ticking." Annie said, her tone of voice totally devoid of empathy for Ashley.

Jean instantly rounded on her. "Well aren't you fucking noble, Leonhardt? Just let the stranger die or whatever so you can bitch about it."

"I don't see you running in there to help her." Annie responded harshly, making Jean choke on his own words.

Before Jean could bite back at Annie, the sudden sounds of explosions and what was like clapping thunder roared in the cafeteria. Everyone fell silent as the sudden battle inside the building overtook everything that they were talking about. Shrieks of something totally unknown to them were screaming, and then more clapping thunder. Another explosion, and then silence.

The door to the cafeteria suddenly burst open, revealing a small, gray creature. Everyone jumped at the sight of something so ugly; gray body, spindly legs like a spider's and a large beak with no eyes. On the beast's back was something made of metal, aligned with wires and tubes and a tank filled with a yellow-orange liquid. The ugly thing shrieked at the cadets and charged, scuttling across the ground towards the group. Everyone scattered in all directions, but the little thing made a beeline for Marco and Jean, both of whom had fallen over trying to get away. Jets of flame blasted out of the side of the creature, and it gave one final shriek. The two boys covered their heads to protect themselves as the creature attacked.

Until something punted it out of the way, and just in time too.

Ashley had killed off the remaining tickers inside, and noticed that the cadets were running away from something through the window. Realizing that a ticker must have gotten through, she rushed outside only to see freckles and Jean about to become little more than a smear on the ground thanks to a screeching ticker. Thankfully, she had ran up and kicked the damn thing as hard as she could, sending it away from the scared cadets.

"You two okay?" She knelt down and gave a hand to Jean, who slapped it away.

"What the _HELL_ was _THAT?!_ " Jean screamed at her.

"Something I thought shouldn't exist here." Ashley said, her voice full of horror. _How the hell are tickers here? The locust couldn't be here, could they?_ Ashley's eyes widened in sudden shock; the locust must have used the other portals to bring themselves here! In the last years of the investigation that Prescott allowed, they had discovered that there were more of the giant hexagons buried underneath the surface of Sera. The Hollow housed dozens of those things and tickers were incredibly common in the locust armies. If the locust were indeed clearly here, as the sudden ticker attack showed, then she would need to alert her new human comrades.

"What do you mean, shouldn't exist here?" Jean asked angrily. He was getting tired of this woman and her excuses.

"I need to talk with your supervisor. Now. Where is he or she?" Ashley demanded. As she said that, the ticker that she kicked suddenly sprung up, and as if recognizing the Sera native, screamed towards Ashley, who simply raised her rifle and shot the thing. The bullets impacted the imulsion-filled canister and promptly exploded, taking the ticker with it. The trainees stared in shock, and Ashley reloaded.

"You want to fight more of these little bastards? Get me your boss!"

"I'll get Shadis!" Connie cried out. This "Shadis" must be the supervisor or drill sergeant, someone who was legitimately in the chain of command. And if the tickers proved anything, then these trainees were going to be prepared for the fight of their lives.

...

Night had fallen for the trainees, but their minds were not at rest. After Ashley had gone to meet with Shadis, the kids had gone to their bunks to talk about the recent events. Most of them had been terrified out of their minds about what Ashley called the "tickers", little mean things that explode. None of them had ever seen creatures like that, but Ashley knew what they were. That only raised more questions about the woman and where she was actually from. A group of boys, consisting of Connie, Jean, Marco, Reiner and Armin were discussing the theories of what kind of secrets Ashley could be keeping from them.

"You think she's hiding something?" Reiner asked the in-thought Armin, who was mentally calculating everything that he knew about the mysterious Ashley O'Malley.

"Of _course_ she's hiding something, Reiner! Are you dense?" Jean bitterly sniped at the large man, who shrugged in response.

"There's only one possible solution to this." Armin explained, the facts that he knew coming together. "Ashley must have fought creatures like those before. Before she told me and Sasha to leave, she immediately aimed at the floor. She _knew_ that they were small, nimble things and she knew that large amounts of people inside would make it difficult for her to stop them from further destroying the hall."

"Speaking of which, did you _see_ the inside after Ashley left to talk to Shadis? It looked like a damn warzone." Connie said. He had seen what a ticker battle aftermath looked like; dozens of scorch marks, bits and pieces of monsters and blood just about everywhere. The blood wasn't too bad to clean off, and Shadis had ordered the flesh and metal to be collected so that someone could take a look at it. The blackened floors, however, would require the wood to be replaced.

"So she fights creatures that explode from where she is?" Marco said to himself out loud.

"That's another thing." Armin scratched his chin. "Why would she need such a large rifle to combat something so small? And with teeth no less."

"Compensating for something?" Reiner joked, and Connie elbowed him.

"It makes no sense. Unless..." Armin's eyebrows furrowed.

"Unless what, Arlert?" Jean asked.

"Unless those creatures that she killed earlier aren't the only things that Ashley fought. Think about it, she said that she was the last of her kind. Seeing how easily she killed those things, it doesn't seem possible that they would have all died from a single enemy. If they were trained like Ashley, then it wouldn't be a problem. The way I see it is that what could be the true enemy of Ashley and her 'COG' is that there is some sort of greater power controlling, or better yet, utilizing creatures like those for some sort of easy fodder." Armin tried his best to reason with what little info Ashley told them. "But there begs a bigger question; _why are they here, at the walls?_ Are they here to conquer us or kill off O'Malley and finish the job, not caring who gets in their way?"

"So whatever killed Ashley's people are now here, basically." Jean reasoned himself, and found that saying it made him slightly panic. "Great. Now _we're_ all going to die, or at least nearly all of us. One of us will live, at least, if Ashley's existence tells us anything."

"So, what?" Connie said. "We hand her over to her enemy and they leave us alone?"

"Something tells me that they wouldn't do that." Armin said to Connie.

"Why's that?"

"Because if they were attacking Ashley, and _just_ Ashley, then why did one of those things try to kill Jean?"

"Because it has no eyes?" Reiner guessed. "It'd be hard to kill a single woman when you can't exactly see."

There were so many questions that nobody could really answer about Ashley. Quite literally dropped out of nowhere, the Onyx Guard as she called herself was a total enigma, be it herself, her motives and everything else that she had talked about. Armin found it hard to believe that she was being truthful in her words. If her enemy had arrived here, then what were their motives? How did either of them get here? These questions could only be answered by Ashley, and that seemed far off. He knew that she was hiding specific details about herself and the place she came from, either because she was lying or she didn't want them to get scared of her enemy, or herself. Going over what she was like was easy, Ashley is a soldier, strong-willed and willing to put herself on the front lines. The Military Police would love to have her, and so would the rest of the branches.

Ashley's existence in the walls would have to come to an eventuality: she would have to adapt to here, away from her world. She must align herself with the MP's, the Scouts or the Garrison. What would become of her weapons, her armor and even her character is unknown. Her armor was advanced, probably better than anything here could compare. Her two guns, the rifle and the double-barreled thing, were unlike anything he had seen. Muskets were already old tech so anyone who got a hold on her would more than likely commission her weapons to study. Her allegiance towards the 'COG', the Coalition of Ordered Governments, seemed to be lackluster. Would they come for her or would they prefer to leave her here and deal with their enemy first.

But who was Ashley's enemy? It couldn't be titans because Sasha had said that Ashley didn't know what titans were until they told her. Was it other humans? It would make sense since she would use weapons, like rifles, that were more useful in killing people than killing titans. Yet again, Armin was probing in the dark.

...

Keith Shadis was a man who had lived through hell and back. His last mission before retiring as a drill instructor, the failed retaliation at Shiganshina, had taken so much out of him, seeing those giants and their terrifying mouths opening and eating everyone in their path. This new life that he was living now was far more peaceful. Granted, he had to be a colossal hard ass because if he showed mercy then the cadets would be in a big surprise when a deviant titan would slap then out of the sky or tear then limb from limb. He couldn't afford to be merciful.

As he sipped his mead, his thoughts went to the woman sitting in front of him. She had been found in the forest, supposedly from a titan corpse, from where Connie and Sasha, ever the dynamic duo, had brought her to him after a supposed attack. He had seen the aftermath. Whatever had attacked, or what remained, had been taken care of by the newcomer. She didn't seem to care that she was an outsider.

"You're Keith Shadis, right? You're in charge around here?" The woman asked. Her tone was sharp and urgent, as if she had seen danger. Keith didn't know how to respond to her, she was so abrupt and in-your-face that he was caught off guard. "Then we need to talk. My name is Ashley O'Malley, and yes I'm an outsider. Yes, from beyond the walls." Everything that she had said was basically her sucking the answers from Shadis' unsaid questions.

"Uh. Okay." Shadis said plainly. For now, he would listen to what she had to say and then send a report to Darius Zackley.

"Alright, look. Keith, I'm going to keep it simple: I want to help." Ashley explained to the quite surprised Shadis.

"I think you should talk to my higher ups first. I can't exactly allow you to do that, yet." Why the outsider would want to help was totally out of his world. He didn't have the registration to allow indoctrination for unaligned forces, but he was good friends with Zackley. He would allow her to do what she wanted to count as help. "I don't think I can trust you as well. I don't know what your intentions or your motives, so how can I know that you're not some agent here to kill us?"

Ashley responded by taking off her helmet, revealing her scar-riddled face and tattered hair. Her stormy eyes locked on to Shadis' own, his gaze never leaving.

" _I'm human._ That's all you need to trust me."

...

"It seems our good friend has arrived. Looks like she found another portal." High in the hills, far away from the camp, a group was watching the events unfold. They had followed the Onyx Guard here, her scent and her trail of carnage were quite attracting. Of course, she had been found by the lesser humanity. They had taken her in, but they could tell that the wallers would be far from trusting her totally. She was a stranger in their land, just like they were. The one who spoke was looking through a telescope at the camp, where he could see Ashley walk out of the command cabin towards the mess hall.

"The tickers failed." One of them, a huge lumbering brute. On him was a shield, a flail and a helmet with ornamental gothic horns. Another one, almost exactly the same as the brute, stood next to him. "We should have gone with them to finish her."

"Patience, friend." A voice that sounded like flesh on sandpaper rasped out. They turned to see jet-black armor, ornate with deep carvings of alien literature and crosses. "We will have our chance on the O'Malley woman soon enough. If anything, it would be nice to see her become a meal to one of the titans." The armored being laughed at the thought. How interesting would that be to be eaten by her own kind.

"You think Saturn and Fenix will find a cure for us?" The scouter spoke. "With what's happening, I fear that our hard work will come undone. We've taken humans from this world to help with their experiments but Ashley's presence might throw our plans in jeopardy."

"It will be some time, but I have a feeling that O'Malley isn't going to be the only human from Sera here for much longer. When the time comes, I'll send a team to deal with her, and those miserable humans. Come, we're finished scouting. Let's head back to Antemurale and report what we have discovered to Saturn." The armored one said, and the group was off towards the nearby cave.

* * *

 **IT'S FINALLY DONE!**

 **So much for a hiatus. I've been typing as much as I can but since I have a job now I don't have much free time, but do expect more updates.**

 **See you then.**


	5. ACT 1: Greetings, Part III

- _Sera-_

"I told you! It was a giant human hand! I'm not fuckin' kidding!" Brendan said to the stranded group in front of him. When the Raven had returned without the Onyx Guard, people were wondering if she had died or had abandoned them. However, Brendan's story about finding a huge portal underneath the island which spawned some sort of giant hand that had taken the woman sparked some fear into the group. It could have been a locust trap.

"Alright people, back to your stations." Frederick waved off the group, "And get some shut-eye. Brendan, a word?"

The leader of the stranded isles walked alongside his best engineer towards the repair garage, where he and his apprentices were trying to get the geobot to open. Right now, it was on his work desk, surrounded by tools, wires and a bottle of water. It seems that trying to get it open, even after Ashley had told them the codes, was still a hassle. Typical of COG machines, only work the people who made them.

"Can't get it open?" Brendan said, identifying the elephant in the room.

"Yep." Frederick sat down dejectedly and ran his fingers through his deep gray hair. "Look Brendan, I didn't see what you saw down there in the caves. All I know is that Ashley has vanished into thin air, and the only thing that we could use to bring her back now looks like it was thrown inside a trash compactor." When Brendan had told the stranded scouts and Frederick that something had "taken" Ashley, they had raced down to the device to see if they could bring her back. What might have been a mighty piece of machinery was now a crumpled ruin, looking like something had squashed it inwards. As soon as they saw it, they knew that it was dead.

"We still have the geobot." Brendan said, looking at the bright side.

"Yeah, and we can't open it without someone from the COG, and the _Sovereign_ is still two days away. For all we know, Ashley could be dying, dead, or worse."

"Could there be more of those devices on Sera?" Brendan threw out a hypothesis.

"You're asking the wrong guy, Brendan. If there were, we wouldn't be able to get there. The closest continent is five hours away by helicopter, and even then our Ravens don't have much fuel." Frederick put the geobot down on the ground and stared at it. "Our only hope to finding what happened to Ashley is waiting for the _Sovereign._ "

Brendan sighed. "I'll tell the others." And then he left.

"'Ey Fred, since when did you care about the COG lady?" One of his apprentices, a young woman with a scar on her lip, asked him. Her tone of voice showed that she was rather indignant that he actually cared about the Onyx Guard. "They haven't done shit for us, and now all of a sudden we've got us an epidemic. The COG can take their fancy fucking thing back and leave us alone." Frederick could only smirk at the apprentice when she turned to fix the off-roadster. While he was no fan of the COG himself, he would rather deal with fellow human beings rather than the locust, or worse, the lambent. Ashley was a spiteful bitch, but she was very pro-human. Something that he liked in her.

He made a mental note to himself that once the COG came and fixed the geobot, he would go with them to find Ashley.

* * *

 _-Unknown world-_

For the past two hours, Ashley had been listening to whatever this Erwin Smith had been saying. Shadis and two other people that had come along with Smith were also present; a woman wearing glasses, with brown hair and seemed to be in a permanent state of excitement. The moment that she saw Ashley, she had practically _squealed_ in happiness to see that the report that Shadis sent of a "black-armored woman with scary guns" was true. The other was a man, rather shot, with a dark crop-cut that reached just to his eyebrows, his eyes narrow and had a deep scowl on his face. He didn't seem to like how he couldn't see O'Malley's face, considering that she was wearing her helmet.

When Shadis had sent the report on Ashley's urging after the ticker incident, he had also sent a piece of the little monsters with it in a box. When Erwin had picked up the strange limb from the folded letter, he called for Hange and Levi and instantly set out for the trainee camp. Something of this magnitude couldn't be ignored, and as he talked to the strange woman, named Ashley O'Malley, he could remember the letter that Shadis sent.

...

 _Erwin, come to the 104th Training Camp this instant._

 _Something's happened. I don't know what's going on but there's some strange black-armored woman with terrifying weapons here._

 _She says that we're in danger of something terrible._

 _Something worse than titans._

 _I've sent a letter to Zackley about it, but the general might be busy so I sent you this piece of evidence._

 _I have no idea what it is, but she does._

 _I've got a bad feeling about this._

...

Of course, Erwin had contacted Darius Zackley about it, but the general was busy dealing with other stuff and would meet with Ashley another time. Even as exciting as this is, talking to someone so unknown, Erwin couldn't help but feel something was wrong with O'Malley.

She seemed... _unhinged._

Like she was expecting something to pop out of the ground and kill her.

"And you have no explanation to you getting here?" Erwin asked Ashley, who remained silent for a little bit until she answered.

"Look, where I come from there was some sort of giant portal, and I know that sounds totally stupid to just say but it's _true._ One of your titans grabbed me, ate me, and then I killed it and broke free. Two of the trainees found me, brought me back to the camp where I killed the little bastards and now we're here." Ashley said plainly. Erwin seemed to be very interested with what she had to say, which kept her own interests in this world.

"There can't be any titans here." Short and grumpy frowned out.

"Well, you can talk to Sasha and Connie about that. They saw the titan that ate me. Connie's still got that bruise from when I socked him in the mouth." Ashley said, and Shadis's mouth smirked ever so slightly. He was already liking O'Malley.

"We can discuss incidents later." Erwin brushed off. "What we want to know, Miss O'Malley, is just who and what you are. And we need the truth, not because of what we are afraid of, but because if you really are alone here, then you're going to need all the help you can get." Erwin explained. His cool, calm persona really did stand out to Ashley. She was always around those who were temperamental, always ready to jump the gun. Not Erwin. He came in here knowing what he wanted to know from Ashley. Everything down from her face to the guns on her back to her allegiances to whatever superiors that she might have.

"Alright then." She said, and leaned on her chair. "How exactly _can_ you help me?"

"By telling us what you know." The short man said.

"I'm not telling you everything." That was the first thing she demanded to them. "What I can tell you are a couple of things that won't get me into hot water here."

"Like what?"

"The war, my weapons and myself. That's it. Everything else is classified." Ashley said, and Erwin's hypothesis was correct; she was a soldier for some sort of army. By the looks of it, she seemed to be a member of an elite force, much like Levi's own squadron. Her use of the term "classified" would probably annoy the crap out of Levi and only serve to fuel the curious fires of Hange on what could O'Malley possibly be hiding.

"TELL ME!" Hange made herself known by slamming her hands down and tossing the ticker limb at Ashley, who caught it fast. "What is that thing? What's your armor like? Can you show me your face?"

"I believe that Hange is correct on a certain matter." Erwin said. "We are trying to build a bridge of trust here, after all. You wearing that helmet of yours puts you on a defensive hold. It makes you unapproachable." He explained, trying to coax out some sort of method for the enigmatic woman to show herself. "If we are to start working together then we'll need to know if you really are human, as Shadis said."

"Very well then." Ashley responded and pulled off her helmet. It revealed her heavily scarred visage to the three of them, Hange letting out a small gasp while Levi seemed to be impressed with the woman's scars. Another check off the O'Malley list for Erwin. She was experienced in fighting wars. She couldn't have possibly gotten those scars from herself. He realized that in another life, somewhere, Ashley would have been beautiful. But the horrors of war and the toll of battle had robbed her of that chance, turning her into something else.

"Good. Now, onto the next part." Erwin said. "These things, these _tickers_ as you call them, are part of something greater?"

"Yes. Back where I'm from, we fought against an enemy that had a single goal in mind: outright annihilation of humanity."

"Sounds like the titans." Levi said softly.

"Yeah, except titans don't gave guns that could _liquefy you_ into a red paste." Ashley grumbled to the shorter man, memories of fighting against the Locust bringing back some long forgotten pains. There was more than one reason to why Ashley didn't want to talk about the Locust War.

"Would you mind explaining your enemy?" Erwin asked, and for a moment, Ashley seemed dumbfounded, but sighed out. If she was going to survive here with both titans and what could possibly be a locust resurgence, then she would need to tell these people everything. Not one detail could be left out, because she knew that if she held back then it could lead to countless deaths. And so, with a heavy sigh, she asked for one thing.

"Could I have a glass of water before I talk?"

"Sure."

...

It had reached night time on the second day that Ashley arrived here when she had finished explaining her story. The four people in front of her were, more or less, stunned beyond words. Ashley had given them a world where war was not only a thing to live by, but it seemed to be a constant on her world, named Sera. Ashley had described it as a formerly bountiful world before it became a planetary wasteland, a result of an eighty-year war that was backed by another, far more gruesome war that sent the planet's civilization into a chaotic mess.

The more Ashley talked, the more flabbergasted Erwin seemed to be. She had left out nothing in her recollection. She had told them of E-Day, and the total war that followed. How billions of people had died in the first years of the ensuing planetwide fighting, and how the death toll only increased. Her family, friends, comrades, superiors. All dead.

And then the true horror story came when she revealed who she was fighting; the Locust. Thankfully, she had a picture of one to show them. A six-foot tall monstrosity, covered in gray scales and armor that glowed orange. A mouth full of razor-sharp canines and red-orange eyes that showed nothing but hatred. This was an enemy, as Ashley described, that would stop at nothing to make sure that every last human was dead. The _things_ she said that the locust did with humans, even Levi felt his blood run cold by the sheer bloodlust and brutality that the locust would throw at humanity. Ashley went further describing their ranks, their weapons, and even their beasts of war, to the mighty brumak that stood taller than titans, to the deadly ticker, which was revealed to be a scurrying bomb used by locust to kill convoys.

Ashley had spared no details on other things as well. Along with the locust, she talked about the spine-chilling lambent, a form of disease that made creatures mutate into monsters that would only get stronger the more you fought them. She also revealed that the locust were subterranean, something that instantly sent bad vibes in Levi's mind. Their home, the huge cave system called the Hollow, created by gigantic worms, had flooded in a last-ditch effort to stop the war, costing humanity their last bastion of hope, the city of Jacinto. The COG, the Coalition of Ordered Governments, had their part in her tale as well. She had talked about how one man, named Marcus Fenix, had given humanity their first victory over the locust with something called the "lightmass bombing", and then using the "Hammer of Dawn" to kill a massive lambent creature to flood the Hollow.

She even told them about the portals. Humongous hexagons made out of black metal that would suck everything in. She said that there might be one on this world to bring her back home.

The decades-long war between the humans of Sera and the locust was a story that Erwin would forever hold in the darkest depths of his mind. He would have never guessed that this sort of warfare existed out of the walls. He knew what titans were, but this was something far greater. If humanity on Sera, fully armed and ready for combat, had barely survived against the locust, then the humanity here would stand no chance.

It became apparent to him, in light of recent events, that Ashley was pretty much the sole hope he had in case the locust would indeed return here at the walls. She knew how to fight them, and how to kill them.

Hange had stood there, taking all the information in, her eyes growing wider as Ashley told them the horrors of her war. Levi, master of playing stoic, seemed to be disgusted at the tales of locust butchery on humans.

"Holy shit." Hange whispered out. "You survived all that?"

"If you call what happened to me surviving, then yeah, I did." Ashley, absent-minded, rubbed one of her scars.

"And the locust," Erwin said, "did they have a leader?"

"They had a couple. I told you about most of their generals, like RAAM, but even generals are given orders by someone. The locust are in servitude by a queen, Queen Myrrah, the ruler of all the locust armies." Ashley explained. She didn't know much about Myrrah other then she was the locust's head honcho after all her generals were cut down by the COG. She had been given orders to shoot on sight, but she had never seen Myrrah.

"They have a queen? I thought all locust were male." Hange said.

"Most of the locust. There have been reports of female locust soldiers, but the only well-known female locust are the beserkers and Myrrah."

"And Myrrah, she's...?" Erwin guessed.

"A complete scumbag." Ashley answered without any hesitation. "Total genocidal pyschopath and species supremacist. She hates humans with a passion."

"I see." Erwin said, digesting everything that Ashley had said. "In light of recent events, I will grant you amnesty in our walls as a sovereign citizen. Shadis will be in charge of your life here and your training evaluation for the new recruits, adding on to their titan-slaying skills. However, this will not come without cost. If the locust do return then you will be in charge of what happens then. We have never fought the locust and you have." Ashley breathed out a sigh of relief. She would have no problem being in command if the locust truly show their faces. Namely, it would grant her two things; more information about the walls, and reason behind the locust coming here.

"So I'm in?" She asked.

Erwin smiled.

"You're in."

...

"Do you trust her?" Erwin said to Levi. After granting Ashley her wish, they had left the training camp on horseback. The sun had dimmed, and it would be some time before they got to headquarters, and Erwin wanted to know how Levi and Hange thought of their newest, strangest comrade.

"She spins a good sob story." Levi spoke, and reached down to his flask to have a drink of water. "I wonder how she'll do against titans."

"She's so FASCINATING!" Hange squealed, much to Levi's annoyance. "Erwin, please, you _MUST_ let me go back there and see how she works that armor of her's! And those guns! Oh, those strange exotic beauties! I should have asked if I could take one!"

"Not on your life, shitty glasses." Levi shot back. "There's no way I'm letting you take guns from a stranger so that you can kill yourself with them."

"Aw, is Levi worried about me!" Hange smiled at him.

"The only thing I'm worried about are the trainees. If I were one of them, I would be suspicious as hell as who the black-armored woman was. And no, Erwin, I don't trust her. She might have spilled most of her guts out to us, but that doesn't mean that she told us everything. For all we know the "locust" could be an elaborate ruse." Levi didn't trust Ashley simply because he had just met her, and would take longer to gain some sort of bond between the two.

"We'll see." Erwin said.

"She said that the locust were subterranean, living under the surface. We should check what we can, make sure that she's not telling us that they're here already." Levi said to Erwin, and then turned to Hange. "We should go to the Underground. Set up some sort of watch."

"We can take Ashley tomorrow, since she knows the locust better than anyone."

...

The trainees themselves were completely in the dark about this. Many of them had gone to bed when Erwin and company had decided to leave and Ashley had decided to take a rest in one of the dorms. When she was a cadet, there were no male and female separation, and this thinking was currently overriding her tired brain. Unaware that she had walked into the male dorm without a care in the world, rubbing her spine from sitting down for several hours.

"What are you doing in here?" Ashley turned around to see Armin behind her, holding a large book. He seemed to be confused to why she was standing in front of him.

"Going to catch some z's. What's that book?" Ashley answered and asked at the same time.

"O-Oh, nothing." Armin quickly replied, which sent curious vibes down Ashley's spine. "The girl's dorm is over there." Armin pointed.

"So you guys divide by gender? Alright." Ashley shrugged, and Armin visibly relaxed. In the moment, Ashley snatched the book away from the young blond. Armin gasped and lunged to grab his book back, but with held at bay by her superior strength with a hand on his chest. She opened the book to reveal some rather obvious information, such as the ocean, desert and other stuff that were commonplace on a planet.

"Why do you have a book on this stuff?" Ashley asked, genuinely confused.

"It's information about the outside world, where you're from." Armin answered, in a tone that said that he was terrified that she had found it. "Here it's considered heretical to have stuff like this. People have been killed because they knew too much, like the oceans and the burning sands." Armin stared at that book as if his life depended on it. He seemed to be very attached to it. "And... my grandfather gave that book to me before he died." So the book had a degree of sentimental value towards Armin. To that, Ashley could respect. She didn't have anything to remember her own family except for static memories.

"Relax kiddo. I ain't telling anyone about this. This is between you and me." Ashley patted his shoulder and handed back his book.

"Can you," Armin said warily and averted his eyes, "tell me about the outside? If that's not too much to ask."

"Wanna head inside and talk about it?" Ashley smiled behind her helmet, and Armin smiled back.

She followed him inside to reveal that some of the trainees had surrounded two of the kids, and if Armin's face showed anything, he knew who those two were. There was a bruise covering the eye of the one on the floor, the one with the gray and brown undercut who was busy clutching his face in pain. The one above him was clutching his fists in rage as he towered over the injured lad, his green eyes burning with indignant fury. Undercut was too busy trying to alleviate the pain rather than listening to the other kid's violent screaming. She also saw that Mikasa, the girl she encountered in the dining hall, was holding green eyes back from doing anything dumber.

"Eren, stop!" Mikasa yelled, trying to tame her friend. "It's not worth it!"

"You heard what he said!" Green eyes, now revealed as Eren, raged. "Talking about the Scouts being a waste of resources! They're heroes, you stupid coward!"

Ashley sighed. She had seen this many times in her life as a soldier, especially from normal gears. Always bickering and biting about who did this and who said what, and their general distrust of the Onyx Guard. She'd seen it all, and had hoped to leave those instances behind her, but seeing it in front of her again just brought back some rather annoying memories. Trainees were supposed to get along and help one another, ignoring what they felt was right or wrong and working for the greater good.

"Is there a problem here trainee?" Ashley's voice instantly silenced the crowd. Eren and the rest turned their heads to see the Onyx Guard standing there with Armin behind her, arms crossed on her chest. She seemed to be in a bitter mood, which surprised Armin because she sounded happy when he found her outside.

"What are you doing here?" Eren asked, not sounding interested at all.

"I'm here making sure you people don't knock each other's lights out before bedtime." Ashley grunted. She walked past Eren to offer a hand to the boy on the floor.

"What's your name?" Ashley asked, and undercut glared at Eren for a few seconds before answering with;

"Jean. Jean Kirstein." Jean said to Ashley, covering the eye that Eren had hit.

"Get yourself some water to wash that bruise, Jean. It'll help soothe the swelling." Ashley gave some advice for Jean, who felt his mouth open slightly. For far, his career in this place had gotten him totally downtrodden by either Shadis and his sadistic forms of training, or trainees like Eren who would blindly fly into a titan's mouth without a care in the world because it would be "heroic". As far as he could see, the only ones here that had a shred of intelligence were the two people standing in front of him: Armin Arlert, frail as a daffodil, and the strange-as-hell Ashley O'Malley.

"Thanks." Jean nodded and left to get some water from the local well, Marco following him.

"Alright," Ashley sighed out, "someone mind telling me just what the hell happened here?" Everyone's eyes shot wide. Since when did the stranger give out orders? But since she sounded sincere when she gave Jean the advice to get the swelling down, it seemed rude to not answer her. Still, nobody answered. Ashley rubbed her temples through her helmet.

"Could one of you _imbeciles_ say something?" Ashley growled out. It was late, she was tired, and the sooner she dealt with this the sooner she could go to sleep.

"Jean said some rather charged things about the Survey Corps, and Eren got mad about it so he punched him." One of the trainees in the back said. Instantly Ashley rounded her eyes on Eren, who did nothing but glare back at the Onyx Guard. Truthfully, Ashley didn't give a flying fuck about any part of the military branches here on the planet and would rather not deal with these types of situations, but since she was here now, it might as well be dealt with. Erwin, Levi and Hange, the three of them were part of the Survey Corps and they called themselves the "Scouts", so they must hold some sort of personal sway with some of the rookies.

"Mind telling me why you hit him?" Ashley asked.

"He insulted the Scouts. Jean called them wastes of resources and was going off on how we could be spending our lives doing better things, like living. Tch, like he could know how to live. We're cattle behind these walls." Eren answered, his brow furrowed and tone angered. He clearly was a fan of the Scouts and seemed to hold a far more zealous belief on them. Jean must have known that he would have struck a nerve with Eren.

"Look kiddo, there's a couple rules in life that you're gonna learn." Ashley said, and it was more of a statement to all of the trainees rather than just Eren. "First, people are going to say what they think and they don't care about what _you_ think. And why should they? Jean made fun of the Scouts, so what? Is he joining them? No. So quit making a big deal out of it."

Eren opened his mouth, but was beaten by Ashley. "Second, infighting solves nothing. It only divides soldiers from doing what they ought to be doing. Jean wants to live in the interior, that's fine. That's his choice, not your's. Punching him the eye isn't going to convince him to stand up and join the Scouts. It's only going to make him want to join the Police even more, because he won't want to spend his time with people who hate him."

Ashley took a breath, "Lastly, and you all probably know this if you're going to go outside the walls, is that people are going to die out there. That's called war. It's not pretty. I think most of you saw my face. War does that to people, both on the outside and inside. Jean looks at the Survey Corps and sees the probably high mortality rate and thinks; "Nah. I want to live." There's nothing wrong with living, Eren. Believe me. But there's nothing wrong to fight for what you believe in as well. Keep that in mind. Jean might act like a dickhead, but make sure to think a little before you have a hissyfit, okay?"

Eren, somewhat ashamed and angry at himself for so easily losing his cool over Jean in front of the newcomer, nodded. He was also angry at Ashley, because to him, she was basically talking down to him as if he were a simpleton. He said, "Yeah, I'm sorry," but something about the tone in Eren's voice rubbed Ashley the wrong way. Almost like he had heard what she said, and it seemed to have only fueled his fury even more. This confused the Onyx Guard, as trying to get into Jean's head wouldn't be a bad thing for this guy. Perhaps Eren thought with his heart, not his brain. She ignored his tone and continued.

"I'm not the one who you should be apologizing to. You didn't hit me in the eye." The Onyx Guard shrugged. She turned to her fellow blond. "Armin, I'm heading to bed. We can talk in the morning."

"Alright, goodnight Ashley." The blond responded.

And then she was gone.

"Words of wisdom from a fellow soldier, right there." Reiner said, surprising the rest of the trainees inside. "She speaks the truth, Eren."

"Don't tell me you're taking _her_ side! I don't care where she's from, she doesn't deserve to come in here and lecture us on what war is!" Eren argued back. Having her defend that horse-faced prick was one thing, but hearing Reiner admit that he found her to be truthful was a bit much for Yeager to handle. "I've seen titans myself! I saw what they can do! Has Ashley seen them? NO!" And then he turned to Armin. "And what did she mean she would talk to you in the morning?"

"I - well, I kinda wanted to ask her what life was like outside the walls." Armin rubbed the back of his head. "It's interesting, y'know? Having someone who wasn't raised here, someone new to this life. Ashley's probably the next best thing to understand what might lay outside the walls."

Eren still wasn't fazed, but this time it was Connie who spoke.

"Is she staying with us?" He asked, hopefully wishing that Ashley would stay. Even if their introduction had been her fist in his mouth, Connie found himself drawn towards the Onyx Guard for some reason. Maybe it was the tough love she seemed to have for everyone.

...

The female dorm, in comparison to the male, was dead quiet. Everyone had fallen asleep. Ashley entered as quietly as she could to not wake any of the slumbering cadets, and eyed the farthest single bed for herself. Seemed like Shadis had made some preparations for Ashley. There was a small end table next to it with a lit candle and a piece of paper with a feather ink pen next to it. Ashley stared at the pen for a couple seconds before taking off her helmet and placing it next to the candle.

Her weapons, the Mark II Lancer and the sawed-off shotgun, were placed near the end of the bed. Her armor, taken off, was shuffled underneath. Clad in nothing but her combat garnets, which was an undershirt and long underpants, she stretched her back and prepared for a good night's sleep.

"Hey."

Ashley turned around to see two of the trainees awake and staring at her. One of them was a tan, freckled girl who seemed to be more or less interested in Ashley's guns and another blonde with stoic eyes. She was tracing her vision across Ashley's curvy body, eyeing the scars that stretched across her chest and spine.

"Yes?" She responded.

"What are you doing here?"

"Going to sleep."

"So you're staying, then." Freckles said, raising an eyebrow. "By the way, my name's Ymir. Big nose dead-eyes is Annie." Ymir nodded her head to the other girl, Annie, who in turn glared at her. "Nice guns you got there. Killed anyone with them?"

"Ymir!" A new voice shouted out softly, it was the girl with the angelic looks. "You can't just ask someone that! It's rude!"

Instead of scolding the girls, Ashley let out a short, soft chuckle. "It's fine, girl. Yeah, you can say that I killed a couple people here and there." That wasn't stretching the truth, Ashley had killed humans along with locust in her time on Sera. Between crazies and stranded forces that grew too powerful for their own good, Ashley had killed plenty of people, and she resented herself for it. Valuable ammo wasted on a member of her own species.

While the little angel and Ymir talked and argued, awakening more of the female cadets, Ashley had already fallen asleep.

...

 _-the Underground-_

The city was quiet, the torches of fire biting against the darkness that was always ready to take over the secret underground city. This is where Levi grew up, learning with the best from the waste of humanity, the scoundrels and the hunters that had taught him so much. The city itself was massive, rising up against the caves on the huge columns that held the surface above.

Suddenly, scurrying could be heard across the city. If one could see, if would seem that the city had been abandoned. There wasn't a soul in sight.

A lone man, coughing hysterically, tumbled out of a building where there could be screams and shrieks heard from the house behind him, glass shattering and furniture being turned over. The sounds of blood being splattered on a wall. The man hobbled away, clutching an injury that seemed to constantly bleed. His hat fell off into a crack in the street, which seemed to spread across the street and beyond. A sudden shot rang out, and the man clutched his leg in pain, only to realize that his leg was gone.

He still had one more, but his efforts to try and get away was stopped by a sudden boot on his back. The revving of an engine, and the man saw metal teeth in his vision, and then darkness as whatever had attacked him had sawed his head in half.

The locust drone laughed as he tossed the body away to an awaiting hungry bloodmount, which eagerly scarfed on the body. All over the city, this was a common sight. Blood had been spilled across the streets, painting the streets red with death. In the center, there was a huge collection of captured humans surrounded by locust soldiers. Most of them were children, no younger than twelve. They had seen their parents cut down in front of them or eaten alive by the monsters that had invaded their city when the giant sinkhole had opened on the eastern side of the city, swallowing the military base before these monsters invaded.

Some of the children noticed a massive flying creature, which looked like something out of a nightmare. Four humongous tentacles draped from the creatures body, where there was a legion of spindly little spider legs, and it was covered in gray armor. A maw full of teeth roared at the captured children, which sent some of them on their rears. The creature descended and something dropped out of it. It was coated in jet black armor, and held a strange weapon that resembled a bow and arrow.

"Report." It said to one of the locust, which was wearing a golden helmet and a gold arm band. It carried one of the rifles with teeth.

"We've rounded up the specific targets, Mortemus." The gold-wearing one spoke to the one in black, and it smiled. "Saturn will be very pleased that he'll be able to get more test subjects and increase our hold on this world. Though, he's going to be annoyed that you had to slaughter an entire town of the humans."

"He'll just have to deal with the blood on my hands, then." Mortemus said, and walked over to where the children were located and snatched one of them out of the crowd. A young girl, by the looks of it. Tears streamed from her brown eyes as she looked death in the face. Mortemus scoffed at the weakness she was showing.

"Please, let m-me go." She sobbed out.

"Tell me, little girl, do you fear death?" He asked, his sandpaper-like voice rasping against her ears.

"I... I... I do..." She said, whimpering out more tears.

"Then fear **ME**." And with that, he tossed the young girl towards the hydra's mouth, which crushed her in a single bite. The rest of the children screamed as the locust grabbed them and put them in the blue sarcophagi that would transport them to Antemurale. Their cries of horror were music to the Theron Elite's ears as he mounted his hydra and departed the now conquered Underground.

Soon, it would be time for the walls to be theirs as well.


	6. ACT 2: Catalyst

_"WE'RE NOT GONNA MAKE IT!"_

 _"KEEP FIRING!" Explosions. The sounds of bullets whizzing overhead. Fires raging across the city._

 _Thunderous stomps. The Locust were converging, with three brumaks closing in on the hospital. Ammo low. No back-up. A dead end._

 _The lead brumak roared and fired a volley of rockets, one of them careening straight towards her..._

 _"ASHLEY!"_

...

The Onyx Guard opened her eyes. The morning sun glowed orange in the sky, a fine layer of dew coating the land. She reached up to put a hand on her face, feeling the sweat dripping down her skin. It was just a memory. Nothing too bad. Ashley could deal with the occasional nightmare about the Locust War. She'd had far worse than waking up to a horrible dream, if the scars on her face were any testament. Still the memories of defending Jacinto hospital haunted her, because it was her home. When it sank, it might as well have taken the last strip of her heart that wasn't hardened. Funny how it worked out, she lost her home and so did the Locust.

But now, apparently, they found another here. Ashley had to scramble her memory remembering where she was. Somewhere not on Sera. A cadet training ground against titans. That was it. By the looks of things, she had slept in. The rest of the cadets were busy training. Ashley could hear them outside, talking like normal people.

Deciding that an introduction was due, she got out of her small bed and donned her black armor. Her breastplate locked on and helmet equipped, she knelt down to pick up the two weapons she brought with her; her lancer, the same one that she had been using for years, and the sawed-off that she had found in the corpse of a titan. Sliding the sawed-off on her back for safety (she _really_ didn't want the cadets to use it), she reached over to the dresser for her lancer.

Only to feel open air.

Thinking she missed, she turned her head. The rifle wasn't there. She leaned over, seeing if she had knocked it down in her sleep, but didn't find anything. Getting a little desperate and slightly fearful that something had happened to her gun, she looked underneath her bed. Still nothing.

 _Where the hell is it?_

...

 _-Half an hour ago...-_

 _"Rise and shine, ladies!" Krista yelled out, happy as can be with the gentle rising of the sun behind her. Everyone else groaned or either slid out of bed like zombies. Mina bumped her head on the roof, and Sasha promptly rolled out of bed and on to the floor. The rest of the cadets slowly woke up, still wishing that they had several more hours of sleep before training began._

 _Krista was always first up. No matter what. She probably didn't want anyone to get punished by Shadis, bless her gentle soul._

 _"Krista, c'mon babe, five more minutes..." Ymir mumbled into her pillow._

 _"Ymir, if you don't get up, you're gonna miss breakfast! And you know how much Sasha eats!"_

 _"HEY!"_

 _Ymir turned over to see the pouting, far-too-cute-to-be-threatening face of Krista boring holes into her eyes. She sighed. Her future wife really was a worrywart. With a mighty sigh, Ymir tossed herself out of bed and onto the floor, landing with the grace of a drunk monkey. It was totally on purpose. She just wanted to feel Krista's smooth skin when the smaller girl caught her. "Ymir, quit doing that!"_

 _"Sorry girl, too tired to care." Ymir smirked, and turned her head to the newest member of the female dorm. "You gonna wake her up as well?"_

 _Krista eyed the slumbering Onyx Guard. "N-No. To be honest, she scares me. All those scars make her look so mean."_

 _"She's not that bad." The two of them turned their heads to see Sasha putting on a relatively clean pair of pants. "True, she punched Connie in the face and killed a bunch of little monsters and nearly wrecked the dining hall, but other than that she's pretty normal. For an outsider." Sasha smiled at the duo and turned her head to O'Malley's body. She could only see her back, she had turned to the wall in her sleep, hiding her face. Her tattered blonde hair still uneven, almost like a crazy bush. The rest of the cadets stared on at Ashley, some of them realizing that she had stayed overnight in their dorm. A good amount had left to the training grounds, like Annie, who didn't really care about the mysterious woman in their midst._

 _And then Ymir noticed the two guns at the base of Ashley's bed. She'd heard one of them in action, the one with teeth, but the other, smaller one she hadn't. Truth be told, Ashley fascinated Ymir. Her armor and her personality was something that Ymir found attractive. Those guns, however..._

 _Ymir walked over to the weapon, the one with the teeth beneath the holster, and picked it up._

 _"YMIR!" Krista harshly whispered at her friend. "What are you doing?! That's not yours, put it down!"_

 _The gun was heavy, made entirely of metal. Ymir noticed that there was a crank at the side of the gun, where she guessed was the mechanism for the teeth on the underbarrel. If she had noticed, there were small tally marks on the grip of the rifle, numbering to nearly sixty._

 _"This is cool." Ymir said, toting the gun. Krista was too busy panicking to say anything. If Ashley woke up to see her friend playing with her gun there was no telling what the outsider would do. "Hey Krista, what would the guys say about this?" Ymir smirked to her smaller friend as she put the gun on her shoulder._

 _"No, Ymir! You're not taking it!" Krista said, putting her foot down. Ymir, however, was already out the door. Krista's eyes widened with terror. "YMIR! This is a really bad idea!" She cried out, chasing her friend down who had decided to do something really dumb._

... **Objective: Find your Lancer**...

Ashley rubbed her helmeted head in confusion. She had clearly remembered putting her lancer down on the foot of her bed right next to the sawed off. There weren't any other places besides her own borrowed bunk that she might have placed her rifle. She'd checked under her bed, done that. Under the dresser next to her bed, done that. Other than that, there seemed like no other possibility for her lancer to have been missing.

Unless it wasn't missing.

Ashley suddenly felt cold fear ping inside her stomach. One of the cadets must have either known where it went, or they took it. Immediately she rushed out of the female dorm as fast as she could, hoping that she had enough time to avert a tragedy. The moment she opened the doors, she saw several groups of trainees either running along the course in a rectangular pattern, practicing hand-to-hand combat, or testing the ODM gear. Scanning the scene, she still didn't find her lancer.

"Dammit." Her voice, strained with phlegm, croaked out in frustration. "How the hell am I supposed to find it when-?"

"Can I see it?" Ashley perked at the sound of a familiar voice coming from the male dorm, right next to where she was. Jogging her memory, she realized that it was Connie who was talking, and the _it_ that he was talking about might be her lancer. There seemed to be a whole myriad of voices coming from the male dorm, each trying to talk over the other. Quickly she walked to the male dorm and knocked on it twice. It took a couple moments before someone opened the door.

"Hey Ashley." Armin said, opening the male dorm to her. "What are you doing here?"

"Where is it." Ashley said plainly, not in the mood for games. Armin paled, the little beads of sweat giving Ashley all the indication that he knew what she was talking about. It was hard to see through her helmet, but Armin knew that she was scowling. The young lad certainly didn't want any trouble, so he opened the door and let her in. And lo and behold, there it was. Her lancer was currently on Connie's lap as he sat down on his bed, a lower bunk. His deer-in-headlights look was almost enough for her to break out in laughter. The rest of the cadets eagerly backed off from her, and to her right she saw there were girls in here as well, three of them. She remembered Ymir and Mikasa, and it took a while before she remembered Krista's name.

"Oh boy." Reiner muttered, readying himself for the inevitable shitstorm coming their way. Bertoldt was close by, sweating like crazy.

Ashley simply walked over to Connie and struck out an open palm.

"Connie." She said, like an annoyed parent. He quickly gave her the rifle, not wanting to piss her off. Ashley slung the rifle on her back, thankful that it was returned to its rightful place. After a couple seconds of silence, she looked around the cadets, looking for the guilty party. It was then Connie, as if knowing what she was looking for, pointed right at Ymir. The taller woman instantly saw this.

"Connie Springer, you limp-dicked-!" She began, but not before Ashley coughed and got her attention.

"Normally I'd let my superiors deal with stuff like this," She said, "but right now I'm just gonna warn you to not do that again. Is that clear?"

"Yeah, sure." Ymir shrugged, and Ashley thought it was enough. She'd be putting these kids through hell later. Her ears picked up the ringing of bells.

"Good. Now c'mon, your training's about to begin."

As she left, they all wondered just what she meant.

...

"EYES UP TRAINEES!" Shadis roared over the poor saps in front of him. The 104th had eaten breakfast and gotten dressed in their attire, and now it was time for their daily chew-out thanks to their instructor, who many guessed had colluded with the devil at some point in his life. Nobody could be this cruel. Curiously enough, most of the trainees weren't paying attention to Shadis. Rather they were eyeing up the woman next to him, the outsider, who stood about a meter to his right standing attention. This got many trainees confused to why Ashley was standing next to Shadis.

"Is this part of the process?" Connie leaned over to Jean, who wiped his eyes to keep them open.

"I dunno. Maybe they're gonna give us something new." He reasoned, mumbling his sentences. Thankfully the two were outside of Shadis' peripheral vision.

"As I know many of you are wondering, this is Ashley O'Malley!" Shadis yelled out, giving a hand to said Onyx Guard. "She is from the outside world, where titans do not exist!" The murmurs that were once near silent were now deafening. "As of today, she is my assistant instructor, and you will listen to everything she says! She will be teaching you the combat techniques and strategies of her world, and you _will_ participate! You will respect her decisions and follow her lead! Failure to do so will relinquish your lunch privileges!" If he was paying attention, Sasha's eyes widened with fear. Everyone else was too busy wondering just what Ashley was going to teach them, or how she got to be assistant instructor in the first place. That wasn't a position for free.

"Um, sir?" A timid voice called out.

"What is it Armin?!" Shadis thundered, and the blond quivered under his instructor's gaze. "Were my instructions not clear enough?!"

"N-No sir, they were!" Armin replied, fearing that he would lose control of his bowels. "I'm just w-wondering... if Ashley's from the outside world, how can anything she teach be helpful to us!" Shadis was slightly taken back by the backbone of one of his weakest cadets, but he was not alone in his questioning.

"That's right! An outsider doesn't deserve to teach us on this stuff!" Another trainee yelled out, and Shadis didn't know who it was.

"Yeah! As if _she_ has anything to offer!" Someone else said.

"She's useless for us!"

"We can't anything useful from an outsider!"

"Yeah, she'll get us all killed!"

Shadis was about unleash his almighty wrath on the now loudmouthed trainees. The tick mark on his head was built to burst, how dare these insolent trainees question his judgment. And as he opened his mouth, Shadis was beaten to the punch by someone else.

 ** _"BE QUIET!"_**

The whole camp, and those around it, suddenly became dead quiet after hearing the sheer _volume_ behind Ashley's voice. Even Shadis seemed impressed with how Ashley was able to completely silence the rambunctious trainees from talking without any use of anger, and simply being loud. Those who were about to speak wisely chose to keep their mouths shut, not wanting to evoke the outsider's anger. Ashley turned to Shadis and nodded, allowing him to speak again.

"Right. As of now, the 104th squad will participate in Ashley's training starting today!" Shadis thundered, and stalked off back to his cot, probably to go get a drink. And as he left, many of the trainees then focused their attention on the Onyx Guard, who stood strong in front of them all.

"First I'm gonna answer some questions." Ashley pondered over the many heads of the trainees and saw a hand raised. "Yes, cadet! Name and question, first!"

"Reiner Braun, ma'am!" The bulky blond replied. "I wish no disrespect, but I might speak for all of us when we wonder how an outsider can train us to kill titans!"

Ashley stood there for a moment. At first, Reiner thought that she was gonna go ballistic, and so did many others, but to their surprise she simply chuckled.

"To answer your question cadet, I'll give you a little information. As all of you know, there are three branches of your army that you can join, the Garrison, the Survey Corps and the Military Police! I will not be training you to simply fight titans, I and Shadis will be testing your fighting prowess to see who is able to fight both titan and human enemies of your state! Those who make top marks will be allowed entry into the Military Police, and the rest will either choose the Garrison or the Corps." Ashley answered, and many of the cadets were shocked. To say that they would be fighting humans, their own kind, was troubling. Then again, they were soldiers. Unless told, they would do what they were trained to do; protect humanity from all threats, inside and out.

To Jean, this presented more trouble than it was worth. To be fair, he was deeply humbled by Ashley ever since the time where she saved his life from the little monsters and when she diffused the fight between him and Eren. However, he didn't know how she would play out the squad and how she would train them. He wanted to be in the interior, where he could keep an eye out on his mother and not have to deal with the titan threat.

"I advise you to not panic." She began. "Despite that I am Shadis's assistant, there are only two added classes to your schedule. Those given to you beforehand by Shadis will remain, and I will be there for assistance if need be." She noticed another hand up. "Yes, cadet!"

"Mina Carolina, ma'am! What classes will you be teaching?" She asked.

"Marksmanship and weapons testing. This includes your ODM gears." Ashley answered, hopefully satisfying the trainees from any further questions. "Is that it? Dismissed cadets, your training starts now!"

...

"So she's gonna teach us how to kill people." Armin mused, and very uncomfortable with the statement he just made. It was some time after Ashley's initiative, and the trainees were going about their business inside the training grounds. Armin and a couple other cadets, which included Thomas, Reiner, Jean and Eren, were walking towards the hand-to-hand combat ring near the lake. Midday, and the sun was beating down on their heads.

"Soldiers shouldn't be afraid to make the call, Armin." Reiner said behind him. "We don't get to say who or what we fight, it's what we do."

"Well, yeah. But it's just so confusing. The ODM gear wasn't designed to kill people, just titans." He replied.

"Remember what Ashley said, Armin? One of the classes she'll be teaching is marksmanship, so that means guns." Thomas said, looking over his shoulder to see Ashley behind them, walking a slow pace towards the rings. "Guns aren't really good against titans, but humans are a different story."

"Jeez Thomas, you're sounding like a serial killer when you say that stuff." Jean spoke up, wrapping an arm around Thomas' shoulders. "Trust me, I don't think shooting a musket's too hard, unless we're gonna use those big guns on Ashley's back." He said, eyeing the two weapons on the woman. "I can only imagine what those things could do to you." Memories of her killing the little creatures inside the mess hall burned in his head.

"Weren't you there when Ymir stole the one with teeth on it?" Thomas asked.

"Yeah, I was there. I have to admit, that girl's got some serious balls stealing one of the outsider's weapons."

Their conversation departed as they entered the rings, preparing for their daily hand to hand techniques. Eren and Reiner instantly paired up, finding a small spot to practice on. They noticed that many of the other trainees they knew were here too; Sasha and Connie goofing off of course, and Bertoldt and Annie sticking together in their own ring, Armin watching nearby. By the looks of things, Bertoldt was getting his ass handed to him on a silver platter. Ashley entered last, getting a position to where she could see the entire place with her own eyes.

The hand to hand combat techniques of the training came were simple; disarm the rogue attacker's knife, and the duel is won. There were many cadets who were taking this with stride, and others who made this serious. Ashley didn't exactly know just how Shadis would grade something like this, but she wondered if it was based on both skillful tact and a bit of ruthlessness. She watched Eren and Reiner fight, and how the smaller lad was unable to hold back and slam the blond into the ground.

"Sorry. I'm not really good at holding back." Eren apologized and offered a hand for Reiner.

"It's alright. Now, let's see how you do as the attacker." Reiner stuck out the knife's hilt for Eren to take, but the boy took some time looking at it. "What are you waiting for?"

"This training makes no sense." Eren admitted. "Even with Ashley beginning to train us, we're not exactly gonna pick a fight with someone our own size."

"Something tells me that Ashley's doing this for something else." Reiner said, and Eren looked up in surprise.

"What do you mean?"

"Remember those little monsters that attacked us when Ashley first arrived here? What did she call them, tickers?" Reiner began to explain. "Last night, while you were asleep, Armin talked about how whatever enemy of Ashley's people were had used the little monsters as fodder, easy victims for her. And now she's going to train us to kill people, and yet, here she is, watching us train with knifes and close quarter combat. You know what I think? I think she's training us for something _bigger._ " Reiner finished, and Eren was staring up at him with wide eyes.

"You mean, fighting whatever killed her people?" Eren said.

"Exactly. Whatever's out there ain't through with her yet, and whatever might come, we oughta be prepared. We have no idea just what her enemies actually are." Reiner reasoned, taking a look at the watchful Onyx Guard. "If they do decide to show their faces, it'd be better off if we knew how to fight them than to not."

Eren furrowed his brow. If he had been watching his feet, then he would have seen the ground rumbling and pebbles dancing, but only for a fraction.

"And that gets me thinking..." Reiner mused, rubbing a hand on his chin and grinning mischievously, "If she's supposed to be the best of the best from her land, just how good is she?" Reiner chuckled. "C'mon, I have an idea."

Ashley was busy rubbing the optic covers of her helmet when she saw two of the cadets walk up to her. One of them was smiling, and the other was trailing him and looked confused. She recognized them as Reiner and Eren, respectively. As they neared, she put her helmet back on her head, hiding her face.

"You need something, cadet?" She asked.

"Yeah, actually. I wanna ask _you_ something." Reiner said mockingly, trying to rouse her up. "How does some second-rate cannon fodder like you wind up as assistant instructor? Smells like bullshit to me. Makes me wonder if you and Shadis are a little closer than _expected,_ if you catch my meaning." Reiner chuckled, and Eren seemed horrified that his friend would say something like that to her. He stared in wonder at Reiner, and then turned his attention to Ashley.

He wished he didn't.

The sheer volume of _rage_ pouring out of that black armor would have made even the most bloodthirsty titan back off. Her fists were clenched into furious balls, tightening so hard that Eren swore he could hear the fabric between her armor stretch itself. He knew her helmet did no justice in hiding whatever enraged facial expressions that were behind it, as he could see the front of her helmet darken, the glowing blue optics shrouded in shadow.

If any of them had been paying attention, the rest of the training had stopped dead silent. Everyone was watching the spectacle.

 _Good god, she's mad. You wouldn't pay me enough to get between her and Reiner._ Eren said internally, and failed to notice that Reiner snuck up behind him and pushed forward.

"Alright Eren time to shine!" Reiner said, putting his hands on Eren's shoulders. "Go show Ashley what you're made of!"

"W-Wait a minute! I don't want to fight her! REINER!" His cries were unaided as he was shoved forward into the ring, him standing on one side and the Onyx Guard on the other. His grip on the knife was half hand and half sweat as he noticed that Ashley slowly took her weapons off her spine. One in each hand, the rifle and the sawed-off. She spied Armin and Annie standing in the growing crowd.

"Hold these. Drop them and you're dead men walking." Ashley warned, and gave her weapons to the two cadets. Armin was trembling underneath Ashley's shadow and Annie still seemed indifferent to the whole scenario, but still held tight to the sawed-off. She looked over to see Armin struggling to hold the hefty lancer. The scrawny lad was heaving under the weight of the gun, and it would have been hilarious were it not rather sad to see him try and hold it straight.

"Want to trade?" She asked, and he gladly took the smaller weapon. Thankfully for Armin, the sawed-off was much lighter than the lancer.

... **Objective: Defeat Cadet Eren**...

The two combatants evened themselves on different sides, Ashley on one and Eren on the other. Eren clutched the knife like a lifeline. Ashley simply turned her body slightly to the right, not even bothering to put up her fists. At first, her intimidation alone was almost enough to make Eren consider a forfeit. However, if he lost his nerve in front of her, what chance did he have fighting titans? He couldn't let his fear take control of him. A part of his mind reasoned to why Reiner got Ashley so mad in the first place, for if her enemy was as terrifying as titans were, then he would need to steel his nerves. This would also help him fight his own enemies as well.

"Alright, I hope you're ready. _Heads up!_ " Eren shouted, and charged at Ashley like he usually did. The strategy remained the same; aim for the neck. Mid-lunge, Eren's arm plunged for the "kill" and aimed to hit Ashley in the jugular. The Onyx Guard simply did nothing, almost tauntingly. Eren grit his teeth as his strike missed as Ashley stepped back a single foot, and made him fumble. He regained his footing and went for the attack again, raising his knife to hit the Onyx Guard.

Halfway his strike was intercepted by Ashley backhanding his arm, causing the knife to fumble out of his hand.

Eren barely had time register what had happened before her right hand, now a fist, collided with his jawline. The impact was powerful enough to send the boy sprawling across the ground some distance away from Ashley. Everyone ushered a collective gasp at the sight of Yaeger getting his ass flattened, but there a few who were hiding their laughter in. Like Jean. Seeing him eat dirt was too funny.

"Target subdued." She announced, and picked up the knife and tossed it to Reiner. "Your go."

Reiner had paled during Ashley's fight with Eren. The fact that she had sent him flying was no hiding the fact that she was strong. Ridiculously so.

"Err..." He gulped. He took a second to reconsider the offer.

"Do it, Reiner." Eren said, turning his head. Though it sounded more like "Ooh et Ayner." with the bruise he was sporting on his jaw, he made it clear that it was his turn. The cadets turned to the big man, whispering to see if he would put up more of a fight than Eren.

Reiner sighed, seeing no way out other than fighting her. "Guess it's a soldier's duty to uphold the command."

"Get ready, here I-!"

 _WHAP!_

And flat on his face he went.

...

"Ow. Ow. Ow." Eren muttered as Mikasa continued to dab his bruise with water. After Reiner and Eren's little scuffle with the Onyx Guard, Mikasa had taken the liberty of retrieving a wet towel to sooth the swelling bruise on Eren's jaw. For the boy, it felt like Ashley's fist had tried to rearrange his teeth. He would have continued to touch his new injury but Mikasa was adamant about keeping his hands off of his face. Reiner hadn't faired much better, as he was last seen walking off to Annie and Bertoldt with a large blue mark across his forehead.

"Eren, keep still." Mikasa chided her "brother" as she tried to soothe his jaw.

"I can't, Mikasa. Marksmanship class is soon and I don't want to be late." Eren responded and took Mikasa's hand, and failing to notice her blush, so that she could keep up when he began to sprint towards the open area where their outdoor classes took part. Coincidentally the area where the firing range was, it was at the back of the cabins, and the two of them could see the roofs of their dorms from above.

"Hurry up guys, you're gonna be late!" Connie yelled as he and Sasha ran beside them.

"I told you." Eren looked back and saw that Mikasa was hiding her face in her scarf. Taking no part of it, Eren continued to run where he could see the large line of cadets formed in front of a square. Eren and Mikasa joined the group at the end of the line, noticing that Ashley was standing by as she noticed that everyone that is accounted for.

"Listen up recruits!" Ashley said loudly, getting everyone's attention. "Today you'll be learning how to shoot! But this isn't just about you putting a bullet between your enemy's eyes. This is about learning to care and clean your weapons." Ashley then walked over to a stack of crates and kicked them open with a thrust of her foot, revealing that there were muskets inside. She leaned down to pick one up and show her class.

"This is your weapon, a flintlock musket! Your appropriate range is fifty yards. You will learn the basics of cleaning, reloading, and proper shooting positions in this class! Any questions?" Ashley said, and saw a hand in the back fly up. "Yes, you in the back!"

"Krista Lenz, ma'am! Will you assist us if we need help? None of us have ever shot before." Krista said nervously.

"I understand that, cadet. Yes, if there is any issues on your posture or weapon, I will gladly assist." The Onyx Guard responded gracefully. "The rifle handed to you today will be the one you keep. They are yours, and so you must take care of them." Ashley said as she gave the musket in her hand to Krista, and the young girl took it with slight trepidation.

"An important lesson cadet." Ashley began as Krista inspected her new rifle. "Guns are not evil, nor are they cruel. They are tools. Those who use them for such purposes are the cruel ones." She talked as she gave out a musket to each trainee, and by the time she was done each cadet was going over their rifle. Connie had stuck a finger down the barrel and felt the ridges inside. "Connie, when I said to care for it, I didn't mean for you to get your finger stuck."

"What are you talking about, my finger ain't stuck." Connie smirked and tried to pull his finger out, and found that he was indeed stuck. "Okay, it is."

"Sasha, be a dear and help your boyfriend." Ashley rubbed her temples. Sasha and Connie both blushed bright red and many of the other trainees couldn't help but laugh.

"Alright, who thinks they can shoot that tree?" Ashley pointed towards the forest, where she had put up an array of targets hanging on the sides of trees. There was about half a dozen of them, all colored white with a single black dot in the center. Planted about a hundred feet away, it was just in range of the gun.

"Eh, I'll try." Jean shrugged and aimed for the tree. He put his shoulder on the stock and his grip on the barrel was sturdy enough for a clear shot. He noticed at the corner of his eye that Ashley was standing there, watching him as he lined up a shot. He fired, and thankfully his grip was indeed strong enough for the recoil to be minimal, and his shot cleared the distance and was about five inches to the left of the small black dot.

"Not bad, cadet. You've got a good eye." Ashley said, and Jean beamed with appreciation. "Alright cadets, form groups of three and take turns with a target. One at a time please, we don't need any unnecessary injuries here." Ashley went down on her knees and put the two weapons that she had on the ground. As she watched the groups, she noticed that some were definitely better than others at shooting. Jean seemed to a natural behind a barrel, leaving her to wonder what might have happened if he had grown up on Sera. Sasha was pretty damn good as well, though something at the back of Ashley's mind told her that she's using the wrong type of weapon for marksmanship.

Others were not doing so well. Krista and Armin, being the frailest of the bunch, were having trouble trying to aim properly due to the weight of the musket. Thankfully Ymir and Mikasa respectively went to their aid. Neither of them were bad shots, but Ashley made a mental note to try and find a smaller gun for them to use. Maybe this world had some sort of pistol for them to use rather than rifles. At least they could actually have a sense of potential. Connie fired once and scuffed the ground ten feet in front of him, making Jean laugh. Eren fired his as well, and his went into the tree itself. She could tell that it got on his nerves.

"Hey Ashley." She turned her head to see Reiner standing there, the bruise on his forehead still fresh. "Mind showing us how you shoot?"

Ashley thought about it for a minute. _What the hell, I've got plenty of ammo._

"Sure." Ashley shrugged and hefted her lancer up, aligning her eyes with the neon blue sights. She squeezed the trigger and the lancer fired a stream of bullets at the small black dot. It hadn't just nailed the target, it had completely _shredded it_. The cadets watched in complete awe as Ashley stopped and turned to Reiner. "Does that satisfy your request, cadet?"

"Er, yeah." Reiner mumbled, still in mild shock at Ashley's gun ripping the target apart. He'd expected it to be smooth and precise with whatever image that he and many others had crafted about her. She was supposed to be a no-miss no-mistakes woman, but here it was shown that her lancer could simply reduce things to ribbons, and that she was _good at it._ Reiner looked back on his simple musket and frowned.

"Better than nothing."

"What about the other one? The two barreled thing?" Another trainee asked, and Ashley turned her head.

"Pardon? Oh, the shotgun." Ashley pulled the double-barreled out. "This doesn't have much range. Its meant for close quarters, like a sword."

"So you can't hit it from here?" Someone else asked.

"No." Ashley shook her head. "I'd have to be right in front of it for any sort of damage inflicted."

"Can you show us?" Another asked, and Ashley smiled behind her helmet. She couldn't help it. Plus, if her own sawed-off was any sort of connection to her own world, there was bound to be more than just what she had on her. The Locust weren't picky with weapons and often used the COG's own weapons against them. And so she walked towards one of the targets, sawed-off in hand. She missed her gnasher. That was the quintessential COG soldier's gun. Sawed off was nice, but just didn't compare to the gnasher's power.

She pointed the sawed-off about two feet in front of the tree.

"Seriously?" Eren whispered to Armin. "That's the range on that thing? What's the point of having something like that?"

"Ashley said it was close-quarters. It must be her backup if the rifle fails or runs out of ammunition." Armin reasoned, rubbing his chin in thought. "Though it doesn't look militaristic in nature. It looks more like an heirloom, to be honest. Her rifle seems to be more outfitted for a soldier."

Ashley clicked the safety off the sawed-off, which she had thankfully kept on the whole time, and fired.

Her lancer had torn the target apart.

The sawed-off, however, completely _obliterated_ the target and knocked a decent-sized hole in the tree itself. There wasn't much left except for white tatters and splintered wood. The trainees were utterly stunned by the power behind that small weapon in Ashley's hands.

"Half expected it to blow up in my hands." She mumbled and put away her shotgun, keeping a reminder to reload it later.

"Holy shit." Jean said silently, with Marco close enough to hear him and nod in agreement. He didn't want to see what might happen if that little gun was fired at a person.

"Class dismissed cadets." Ashley said, and walked off. "See you tomorrow."

As the crowd dispersed and left the area, none of them had failed to notice that in the forest behind the target boards, a single ticker with a camera attached to its body scurried off.

...

The taste of what was to come that left itself in Ashley's mouth for the training classes was a good one. The trainees were good at their weapons and some of them were already considered to be proteges in her eyes. Jean and Mikasa were two excellent shooters and she could count on them to be prepared in case anything went wrong already. Many if not all of them were willing to learn her ways, and she felt good on that. As she sat on her bed with her helmet in her lap and her guns at the foot of her bed, she couldn't help but stare at the sawed-off.

 _What was something from my world doing here?_ Ashley didn't get it. She'd read the report that there were multiple portal devices on Sera, but she had no idea what they did until now. For some reason, the Locust had somehow arrived here as well. She knew they were here. The tickers sure as hell couldn't have gotten here by accident, so there must be a Locust stronghold, like Nexus, here on the world. So why did she find her new weapon in the stomach of a titan?

"Do titans eat Locust?" She wondered. Only a select few Locust would wield the sawed-off. It was far too cumbersome and with the awful range that it had, the weapon was better off collecting dust on a memorial shelf. So how could a sawed-off find itself in the belly of a titan?

Ashley hated the waiting game. As an Onyx Guard, she was supposed to know anything before anyone else in the COG's army, like Azura and Prescott. Her patience would only last so long before she completely left the camp and struck out on her own. But she had agreed to Erwin to train the cadets in case the Locust do indeed make a strike on this world. The only thing was _when._ The Locust were masters of surprise attacks and the waiting game was never in their mindset. She knew they preferred to strike fast and hard, catching their enemies off guard and obliterating them. Where would they strike first?

Or have they already?

Ashley rubber her hands through her tattered hair. She felt so damn _useless._ She was already trained in warfare and she could easily take on a titan, but waiting for the locust to make a move was nerve-wracking at best.

She simply had to accept the fact that the only way to know how bad the situation was is to simply hold her breath. Deciding that worrying would only hurt her, she climbed into bed and went to sleep.

...

The soft wind sang a sad tune as people had learned what happened to the Underground. The whole city had been ruthlessly slaughtered, leading many people to believe that titans were the cause. Many said that the hole in the ground where the military base was had opened up a titan cell, leading the city to slaughter before the titans escaped into the wild. The fear of similar attacks across the walls were spreading as many feared that the things that had defended them for so long were not as impervious as previously thought. As the Military Police continued to clean up the mess of the former city, Darius Zackley looked on with sadness.

For too long he had been appointed his job as Generalissimo Zackley, and for too long he had known what it was like to lose entire regions of land. Wall Maria, humanity's greatest loss, was an eternal reminder that the titan threat was ever changing and ever growing, ceaseless in the bloody devouring of all humankind. Standing next to him was Nile Dok, who was busy blanching at the sight of the slaughter. There were no survivors inside the city, the titans, if there had been any, were thorough in their hunger.

"What do we do, Zackley?" Dok asked, realizing the severity of the situation.

"We move on, Nile. We rebuilt and repopulate as best we can. There isn't any time to mourn no longer." Zackley said, knowing full well just how it made him sound.

As Nile Dok left with a shadow on his face, Zackley could only help but remember the letter that Shadis sent him about a week ago on some sort of woman that came to the walls. An outsider. He'd sent the letter to both him and Erwin, who had the time to meet with the outsider and talk with her. Zackley had not, and had decided to fully introduce her into their society when the time came.

If the titans could have somehow popped up and killed the entire Underground, something completely unheard of, then maybe this outsider knew a little more than he did.

Nile Dok was busy readying his horse when a soldier came up to him.

"Commander!" He turned his head to the soldier, who was wearing a bandanna on her head. "We found something!"

The soldier opened her hand to reveal a pendant of some sort, an emblem with four pointed sides with a chain. Nile had never seen anything like it.

"What is that?"

"I have no idea, we found it in the rubble of one of the houses." The soldier responded. "Commander, as strange as this will sound, I don't think titans did this."

Nile raised an eyebrow. "What makes you say that?"

The soldier answered him with her own question.

"Since when did titans use guns?"

* * *

 **Hello. I didn't like the path the story went so I edited a part of it to go another way. This will allow me to bring more characterization and more in-depth plot rather than fill it out as a total gorefest. I want to bring something totally new to the table of this sort of fanfiction and I felt that editing the confrontation out between Levi, Hanji, Erwin and Ashley about the Underground would have rushed the story and not let it settle as something bigger. There are plenty of questions that need answering but I don't want them to suddenly come into the light with no buildup. That would be lame. So I'm planning something else, but still going on the same path, but a tad bit different. Don't worry, the Locust will eventually make their mark for their planned conquest and Ashley's gonna show how to be a Gear.**

 **See you all soon!**


	7. ACT 2: Roadblocks

_-Sera_ -

The CNV _Sovereign_ was an impressive ship that many of the COG remnants considered to be their last bastion of hope next to that of Anvil Gate. The Raven's Nest class carrier had arrived at the populated island chains not too long ago, anchored at the refurbished dockyard where a series of ramps from the top of the ship touched down to solid ground. With Vectes still trying to piece itself together after constant lambent attacks, the _Sovereign_ was both the first and last line of defense that the COG had against the lambent and the Locust. All of their tech that had survived the fifteen years of war after E-Day was nestled on that ship.

Needless to say, the _Sovereign_ was a fortress to some, a bastion to others, but a home to all.

Brendan wiped his brow from the harsh rain that the _Sovereign_ arrived with. Rain was always a good thing. For the Stranded, it meant a crop boom. And by the looks of things, it was also a good thing for the COG as well. Brendan stood with many other Stranded, looking to welcome the COG to their island. Though many were indifferent and few were no fans of the COG, it was better than having the Locust horde show up or worse, the Lambent.

When they had noticed all of the armed Gears moving in and out from the ship to enter the island, most of the Stranded found themselves welcoming the COG. Extra guns were always a good thing, especially in these times. Some of them were already talking to the soldiers, asking whether or not they had been followed, had they been attacked or if they had seen any missing loved ones. Traveling outside the island chain was a risky business, so having the COG come to them was far more beneficial to both sides. Here, the Gears could stock up on supplies and rest while the Stranded enjoy some more professional support and additional firepower.

For Brendan and Frederick, there were more important matters than that. The _de-facto_ leader of the Stranded here and his most trusted friend eagerly awaited the arrival of Fenix. It was all they could do if they were going to save Ashley and finally get to the bottom of this ever-growing mystery. Ashley had told Brendan herself to get the geobot to Marcus, and the code to unlock it as well.

 _Whatever was stored on that stupid little thing better be worth it,_ Brendan grumbled in his mind.

...

"Am I the only one who can't help but wonder how these people got here?" Carmine said out loud, using his lancer to point the collection of buildings across the island. Marcus knew he had a point. He had expected a smaller population, but it seems that this might be one of the biggest Stranded settlements he had encountered. He could identify a hospital and a helipad, holding a rusted Raven.

"You'd try to run to any corner of the world if it meant escaping the Lambent," Anya said to Carmine, "By the looks of things, they got lucky. This used to be an old UIR settlement, left alone after the Pendulum wars. Looks like E-Day skipped this place as well."

"Well, lucky them." Marcus said softly, taking in the sights of Stranded families running around.

"Are you Marcus Fenix?" The group turned their heads to see an elderly man with a full gray beard waving his hand, with another person standing next to him holding a hammerburst. The man walked over, and Marcus and his group noticed that he was holding a pristine geobot in his left arm.

"Who wants to know?" Marcus said back.

"The name's Brendan Yukon. I lead this little settlement here. This is Frederick Cornell, best friend and chief engineer. Come, we have a lot to talk about."

"Can't help but notice that you're missing an Onyx Guard. Like the one who was supposed to be here." Dom noticed, taking note on what the _Sovereign_ was here for. So far they hadn't seen a single clue on whether or not an Onyx Guard was truly here at the settlement. This wouldn't be the first time that the Stranded had set up a trap for the COG. They were all willing to go whatever lengths to survive in this new, lawless land.

"It's... _complicated._ We should talk in my office."

Marcus turned to his group.

"Alright, here's the plan. Anya, Carmine, see what you can get out of these people. Ask them about anything related to the Onyx Guard. Dom, get Cole and Baird out here. I have a funny feeling that we're gonna need them."

...

- _one hour later...-_

Cole and Baird had come once they were requested from Marcus. They had all arrived in Brendan's personal office in what might have used to be for an Innie general of some sorts, if the dust-covered medals on the wall could be of any evidence. Surprisingly the place had power, as Brendan pointed out that Frederick and a team of Stranded had fixed the hydro-thermal generator underneath the settlement. The Stranded located here had been living here ever since Jacinto sank, growing in population once word of a strong settlement in the middle of the sea started to make its way inland.

And Marcus couldn't believe the words that started to come out of Brendan's mouth when he started to talk about the Onyx Guard.

"Have you people been sniffing imulsion or something?" Baird said, totally incredulous. "Because that is the downright fucking craziest thing I've ever heard. You guys found some giant portal in the middle of the second mountain north of here, right under your noses, and suddenly out of nowhere a giant hand grabs O'Malley and drags her into some wormhole."

"That's the whole story." Brendan said, unphased by Baird's ranting.

"It's _bullshit_ is what it is." Cole shot back. He didn't buy the story one bit.

"Alright, enough." Marcus said, causing Baird to throw his hands up and stand next to Cole. "So how do we get Ashley back here?"

Brendan nodded to Frederick, who was fiddling with the geobot the entire conversation. "Before she got taken, Ashley said that she there were more of these portals located all over Sera. There was one here, where we found her, and this." Frederick tossed the geobot over to Fenix as Brendan continued to talk. "Before she got taken, she wanted you to have it. Gave me the code as well, said it was _Echo Four Sunder Nine_. She said that the geobot had all the other locations on it as well. Couldn't get it to open, so we called for help."

"There's an affiliation thumbprint on the enter key." Baird noticed on the device, located on the activation button. "Crafty little thing. Whoever had this certainly had some paranoia."

"So we set sail for two days to open a geobot." Dom deadpanned.

"I didn't realize you were busy." Brendan said.

"JACK, plug in and see what you can find." Marcus gave the geobot to the uncloaked android, who had been fortunate enough to have been given a spare battery thanks to one of Brendan's cohorts. The robot companion inserted his connector module, which caused the geobot to pop open and reveal what has been hidden inside the device. Everyone in the room took note of what appeared.

"That's... our planet," Baird said, getting a closer look at the huge blue sphere in front of them. He was correct as planet Sera was projected in front of all seven of them in flawless holographic light. Even the two moons were shown orbiting the world. Mountain ranges, forests, deserts and even the ruins of cities could be seen, leaving many wondering just how recently the image was formed. "Hey! Here's us!" He pointed at the small green rectangle located on an island not far from Tyrus.

" **WARNING!** " A sudden electronic voice boomed from the geobot. "UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS INITIATED. PLEASE USE VERBAL ACCESS CODE TO VIEW FILES."

"That's on you, Marcus," Dom said.

"Echo Four Sunder Nine," Marcus said loudly so the machine could hear him.

"ACCESS CODE GRANTED. WELCOME, ADAM FENIX." The geobot announced, much to the shock of every member of the COG.

"Adam Fenix?" Baird wondered out loud, leaving Marcus completely confused and quite angry. His old man was a very sore spot to begin with, and having a random machine announce him by the name of his father only succeeded in making him mad. He let out a low growl at the sound of his father's name. Though why would the geobot call him by his father's name? His dad was deceased.

"Man, this only getting weirder and weirder..." Cole mumbled.

"Guys, look." Dom pointed at the holographic image to reveal that next to the small green square there was a red hexagon, located on top of where they were.

"You said the portal was at the north end of the island?" Marcus asked Brendan, pointing at the hexagon.

"Yes, and it was in the shape of a hexagon as well." Brendan said, taking note of the images.

"Well, you can say that-" That was as far as Cole got out mid-laugh before a small beep sound came from the geobot, revealing that _another_ hexagon popped up, right on the coast of Tyrus. And then another came up, this time at the heartland of Gorosnaya. Marcus and the others fell dead quiet as the map of Sera started to reveal more portal locations. Two became three, three became seven, and then seven became _twenty._ As it was starting to become clear, Sera was utterly littered with the portal devices, the number of them growing by the second until most regions of the planet was covered in flaring hexagons.

And they were all red.

Except for one.

"There," Baird pointed at the single green hexagon in a swarm of red, "You said that your's was wrecked when it came on, so that means that every one that's red means its either destroyed or offline. This one must be the last one on the planet that's still functional."

"And where is that one, Baird?" Brendan asked.

"Well, based on the topography of the region and the latitude, I'd say it's... uh oh."

Everyone turned to the engineer.

"Well?" Cole asked.

"It's," Baird shook his head in frustration, "back where we got into Nexus. After the Sires and New Hope."

"You mean-?!" Dom exclaimed, but was beaten by Marcus.

" _ **Mount Kadar**._ Ah, shit." Marcus groaned, and the rest of his friends shared his sentiment of Mount Kadar. That mountain was a nightmare, and the journey that Delta Squad took with the Centaur straight into the heart of the former Locust stronghold was not a pleasant one. Going into the dark was one thing, but _going back_ was a whole another story. Seeing that the only functioning portal device was back there in the hellish region, where they had infiltrated Nexus and discovered the Locust city, did not light up hope in their hearts.

"I take it you've been to Mount Kadar." Frederick snickered at their expressions.

"Yeah, if you want to count in enormous Locust stronghold as well as snowy shithole, yeah you can say that we've been there. Fun times." Baird said.

"So that's it then. Brendan, does that Raven of your's fly?" Marcus asked.

"Yeah, it does. Rusted as hell, but it still functions. However, one of the fuel pumps is cracked and the engine needs some tuning if we're gonna - w-wait a second!" Brendan suddenly yelled out, realizing what Marcus and Delta were planning. "You're not seriously gonna fly all the way to Mount Kadar, are you? That's nearly six hours! And why take ours? Don't you have any spare Ravens?"

"Yeah, we do. And you're coming with us." Marcus said, leaving a stunned Stranded leader. "It'll take too long for the _Sovereign_ to sail, and Kadar is a landlocked mountain range. It'll be easier to fly there."

"I... I can't Marcus. I'm sorry. As much as I would love to join and rescue O'Malley, I can't leave the outpost and leave the people who trust me with their lives. Too many people." Brendan responded, rubbing his forehead from the sweat forming on his brow. As much as he would want to go and help find Ashley with the COG, he had far too many responsibilities right now. His part in their adventure had ended with the geobot safely in COG hands. "I can't guarantee the safety of the _Sovereign_ from Locust or Lambent, but she'll be safe docked here. I'll give you the Raven. We don't really need it anyway, but you're going to have to fix it if you want to get to Mount Kadar in one piece."

"I'll do it," Everyone turned to Frederick, who had spoken up for the first time since arriving here, "I can get the Raven up and running again. I want in on Brendan's seat as well. I wouldn't miss saving an Onyx Guard for the world."

"How long will it take?" Dom asked.

"Depends. We have the parts for the Raven around here somewhere."

"Fine. Frederick, soon as the Raven's fixed, let us know."

* * *

 _-Unknown world-_

Ashley wiped her eyes as the sun shined bright into the female dorms. By the looks of things, it was a slow day today. Many of the other cadets were either sleeping or just getting up, recently awakening just like her. The Onyx Guard was usually the last one to wake up and get prepared, so seeing other cadets in the building was slightly enjoyable. It reminded her of all the times when she was a little cadet at Onyx Academy.

"Hey, you're awake!" Ashley turned her head to see Sasha sitting on her bed, all dressed up in casual clothes.

"What's going on?" Ashley asked.

"Shadis had an emergency meeting in Wall Sina, so he left us the whole day to ourselves." Sasha explained, which was probably the reason that the cadets were waking up later than expected. Ashley simply got up from her bed in her undergarments and walked to her armor.

"Did anyone touch my stuff again?" She asked, and Sasha blushed at her question.

"N-No, I don't think so, really." Sasha said back. Ashley gave a small huff as she reached for her armor and equipped it as she had done many times in the past. Sasha watched in mild fascination as she watched the outsider preform a total armor-up in flawless precision. When she put on her helmet, the affiliation lights went on with the bright blue common with COG armaments and armor. The only word that came to Sasha's mind was _professional._ It was envious of her to watch O'Malley. She had such skills in all things that were about waging war, and here she was, little more than some kid.

"Good. Both are still here." Ashley reached down to pick up her lancer and the sawed-off, placing them on her spine as she walked out of the female dorm, Sasha close behind. "So, what do you all plan on doing today?"

"What? Oh, nothing really." Sasha responded, "I guess I'd probably hit the cafeteria first and then start training on some of the things I'm not good at."

"Such as?" Ashley asked.

"Teamwork," the girl said back, "I'm not really good at telling others what's going on. I mean, I've been practicing with Connie. That's how we found you in the woods. But I'm still trying to break the habit. I'm used to going solo when it came to stuff such as hunting, but here it's totally different. I feel a little lost."

"Give it time. You can't break something you've learned for so long in just a day." Ashley talked, remembering all the bad habits she had when she was a young cadet like Sasha. When she was just starting, her usual response to being anxious or nervous was to tug at her hair, something that the drill instructors noticed and dealt with. No longer did she have the long flowing mane that someone like Krista had, now it was a simple short cut, reduced to its new length thanks to too many nervous breakdowns and dozens of battles, leaving it tattered and dark. Her habit was gone, but not forgotten. Someone like Sasha simply needed the time to develop a way out. It couldn't be rushed, because then the cycle would be repeated.

"Thanks Ashley." Sasha said to the outsider. It was refreshing to see someone so supportive out here. Usually Shadis beat the morality out of everyone all morning. Ashley was different. Sasha guessed that it was because where she's from there was something horrible going on and someone had to give team spirit.

...

"Hey, check it out," Jean nudged Marco with a slight shove, "Guess who Sasha dragged in." Said freckled boy turned his head to see Ashley O'Malley walk in right behind Sasha, making a beeline for breakfast, which was the usual weekend biscuits and gravy. The gravy was nice and the bread was soft to Jean's taste buds. He saw Sasha grab two trays, one for her and the other for Ashley and began to serve herself.

"Yo, O'Malley!" The Onyx Guard turned her head to see Jean waving his hand at her. Next to him was Marco, and sitting in front of them was Connie. "Come over here and sit with us, and bring Potato Girl too!"

Ashley noticed out of the corner of her eye, Sasha grit her teeth like stone. _Potato Girl must be an unwanted nickname for Sasha._ Ashley reasoned. As she finished collecting her food and found an empty spot on the bench next to Connie, who was absentmindedly playing with the cold gravy in his bowl, Ashley noticed that once again all eyes in the room were on her. She simply ignored it and went down to eat, taking off her helmet and putting it next to her tray.

"Mind telling me why you call Sasha _Potato Girl_?" Ashley asked, and Jean started laughing while Sasha who had just arrived started to glare at him with a stink eye.

"During our first day here, Miss Eats-a-lot over there decided that it was a smart idea to eat a fresh baked potato in front of Shadis," Jean said, explaining the story and clearly enjoying it and the glare that Sasha was throwing at him, "and it only gets better. She tried to play it off by giving him half of the potato she stole. So he punishes her by making her run until the sun sets, that or lose her eating privileges for the whole week. Funny stuff, Braus."

"I couldn't just leave it there!" Sasha argued. "It was nice and fresh! It would have gotten cold by the time anyone decided to eat it anyway!"

"Listen Sasha, I get it that sometimes you're hungry, but you're always hungry." Jean said back to her, putting his hand on his chin and leaning forward.

"I take it you're an opportunist," Ashley said to Sasha, who wasn't expecting Ashley to talk, "taking risks when they reward you. Nothing wrong with being an opportunist, but that might be the root of your teamwork problems. Perhaps you simply need to think about the bigger picture, like how you gave Shadis a piece of that potato. You're capable of being able to learn from your mistakes, maybe that was one of those times."

"Thanks Ashley. Are you going to finish your biscuits?" Sasha asked, making Jean laugh out loud while Marco smirked behind his hand. He didn't want to look rude, but Sasha being _Sasha_ to the outsider and always wondering about food was just too funny.

"You can have 'em. Taste like cardboard anyway." Ashley pushed her biscuits towards Sasha, who proceeded to gobble them down. "So Jean, why the Military Police?"

Jean wiped his chin of excess food and gave a smirk, "The MP's only recruit the best of the best, plus the cozy life in the interior isn't so bad at all."

"And what about you, Marco? You in it for the good life?"

"N-No, actually," Marco sputtered, "I want to help serve the king, no greater honor than that I imagine. I've always wanted to be part of the king's guard."

"Don't listen to what he says Ashley," Jean said in a half-heart attempt to hide what he was saying by covering his mouth with a hand, "he only says that he wants to play glorified guard dog but he wants the good stuff like me. A nice, simple life in the interior. No titans and no monsters."

"That's not true!" Marco argued, and while the two divulged into arguments Ashley was silently digesting their words. The Military Police as she knew was in charge of all security and protection of the people of the walls, but by Jean's words it seems that the Police was more of a position to covet and exploit rather than uphold the law. It reminded her of some of the other recruits in the growing days of her own years as a cadet. Many of them talked about how they would be able to get away with anything once the black helmet was on their heads. Ashley never really gave them any thought. She was there simply to make a stand against the COG's enemies.

She also learned that only the top ten recruits would be able to go into the Military Police. Shadis had informed her days ago of the requirements. It seemed ridiculous that the best soldiers offered would have a chance to not go out and fight like they were trained to. A waste of potential. Ashley looked at Jean, who was busy talking to Marco and laughing at his reason to join the Military Police. The boy was smart, skilled and talented with the ODM gear and rifles. His temper might be strung, but Ashley guessed that it would only take a single battle for Jean to even out his attitude, make him better. Marco was a decent soldier as well, nearly on Jean's own level with the ODM, but his passive nature was a turn-off.

"...well, at least you're playing it smart Marco, not like Yeager over there." Jean said, narrowing his eyes at the green-eyed boy sitting at the table opposite. Next to Eren was Mikasa and Armin, talking about something. This interested Ashley, the differences between Kirstein and Yeager were definitely evident. Opposites of the same spectrum.

"And what is Eren's issue?" Ashley asked, hoping to get more info.

Jean took a swig from his water before answering, "The Suicidal Bastard over there thinks he's hot shit, that's his issue. Always talking about how he's going to wipe out all the titans from the face of the earth, how damn stupid. Like he's not piss-scared like the rest of us with a shred of intelligence in our skulls."

"You take issue with this how?"

Jean grit his teeth, "I don't give a damn about what Yeager does with his life. He just _annoys_ me, alright? Thinking I'm a little coward trying to hide behind the walls, god forbid I want to live and enjoy a quiet life with the MP's. He can go and live his stupid fantasy and jump inside a titan's mouth for all I care."

"You might have to work with him in the future one of these days, Jean. And if the stories are true, you're running out of room to have a simple life." Ashley said, and Jean ran a hand through his hair. Why was talking to Ashley about his issues so hard? She was so damn smart, able to make correct assumptions just by hearing Jean talk about what branch of the military he wanted to join. He felt the cold feeling of envy creeping up on his spine. If he had Ashley's skills and smarts then the Military Police would be _begging_ to let him in. Jean suddenly remembered what he wanted to say to Ashley.

"Oh, forgot to say. Thanks for helping me out that night, O'Malley. I mean it."

"No problem, Jean."

"Hey Ashley, what exactly are you?" Marco asked, and Ashley turned to him.

"I'm an Onyx Guard." A rather simple answer to a simple question.

"I know that, but I mean _what._ What's an Onyx Guard? Is that some form of army where you're from?" Marco continued.

Ashley rubbed her chin, trying to decided on how to answer his question without being too informative.

"The Onyx Guard... well, they're kind of like the Military Police. Spec Ops. Took orders directly from the top guy, nobody else. If the MP had an elite squad that operated solely under the command of your monarch, then that would be the equivalent of the Onyx Guard." Ashley explained, leaving the rest of the trainees at the table stunned. Ashley's comparison had shined down some interesting aspects about her life as a soldier. Jean took a long look at her, realizing that she was pretty much _above_ any sort of military position that he knew. She was the one percenter. The elite _of_ the elite.

"Damn. Were you always an Onyx Guard?" Connie asked.

"I was a cadet like you at one point. If that counts." Ashley replied. "I was recruited at least a decade ago, in my time. After I became a regular Gear, some people took notice of me and sent me to Halvo Bay so that I could become who I am now. Onyx Guard, full through."

"How old are you?" Sasha asked, seeing as though she could get away with it since she was a girl.

"Twenty nine. I've been fighting the enemies of my world since I was fourteen."

It further shocked Jean to hear just how similar Ashley was to him at one point in her life. Hell, she was almost like a parallel version of himself. One question still stuck out in his mind though. Soldiers were only needed if there was an adversary to fight, and if someone like Ashley was needed, then who did she fight where she was from? Humans? Titans? Or something else?

"And who are your enemies? They're not titans, right?" Connie asked, dropping the bombshell question. However instead of answering clearly like she had been doing, Ashley remained silent this time, and the four cadets at the table realized that everyone else in the room was listening in, some leaning in to get a better angle while others had simply stopped eating to hear better. Seems like Ashley noticed this too, because she put on her helmet and stood up, walking out of the cafeteria.

"I'll be at the shooting range if anyone needs help with their muskets." She said, and then left.

Jean and Marco stared at the doorway, wondering why she left when Connie asked who she fought. Had they triggered some horrible memories deep in her mind? She had said that she was the last of her kind. Did that mean that she was the last Onyx Guard left?

"I told you she was hiding something." Reiner said.

...

Ashley marched across the dirt fields of the training camp, making a hurried mark towards the shooting range. Inside, she felt totally conflicted on how she responded to Jean's question by walking out on him and his friends. Would it be smart to tell them about the Locust, like how she had told Erwin and his officers about them? Or was it simply smarter to keep them in the dark until the time came? There were two sides of this argument. If she told them, then she risked the gamble of completely panicking the entire 104th class into a frenzy, but if she kept silent then people could die.

"Ashley, wait!" The Onyx Guard turned her head to see Armin running up to her. He must have noticed her abrupt leave.

"What is it, Armin?" She asked, hiding her conflicted mind.

"You alright? Jean didn't say anything too intrusive, did he?"

"No," A half-lie, "I just remembered to get in some training before I start the day officially." Ashley moved forward and started walking to the shooting range, and turned her head to see that not only was Armin following her, but he had his own rifle strapped to his back. He must have brought it to brunch before Ashley and Sasha arrived.

"You could just say that you need help." She said, making Arming turn his head in frustration. "There's nothing wrong asking for a favor."

"I refuse to be anyone's burden. I need to try and do things on my own now." Armin said, thinking back to his childhood where Eren and Mikasa would rescue him from the neighborhood thugs, and then most recently in training how often the stronger members of the class such as Reiner would lug around his stuff, knowing that he was too worn out to continue. It burned inside how useless he felt. Even in marksmanship class he struggled to hold his musket straight enough to hit a target.

"You're not a burden. If you want my advice though, don't join the Scouts. Become an officer in the Garrison. Stay safe."

"I made a promise Ashley," Armin said, "That me, Eren and Mikasa would go an see the outside world together. That's why I'm joining the Scouts, so that I can accomplish my dream and fulfill my promise to my friends. They're all I got left." Armin poured out his true reasoning for training so hard. He wanted to stay with Eren as long as he could, and make sure that he would see the world beyond the walls as a Scout. Ashley admired the little lad's courage and determination to stay the course, never once giving up. She could respect that. She'd seen people just like him back at the Academy, pushing themselves to the brink to prove themselves.

"Admirable. Foolish, but admirable." Ashley said back, and Armin smiled at her.

"Hey, not all of us are super soldiers from beyond the walls." He responded, and Ashley chuckled at his little quip.

The two arrived at the shooting range, and surprisingly there were other people here practicing their skills. Ashley caught sight of Annie Leonhardt testing the recoil of her musket, firing into the forest with no real target. There was a box next to her with rounds cut up and put together. Ashley guessed that she was testing the amount of gunpowder needed to make a powerful hit. Annie fired once into the trees, nailing a branch and cutting it off.

"Afternoon, Annie." Annie turned to see Ashley and Armin walking towards her.

"Ashley." Annie responded simply, and went back to trying out a new round.

"Mind if we assist?" Ashley asked.

"Knock yourself out."

Ashley mused the fact that Annie wasn't one for talking much. The Onyx Guard didn't mind. Armin took off his rifle and stood next to Annie, looking down to see what she had created. There were two rounds that Annie made, one with less gunpowder and one that was nearly overflowing. Armin nervously looked at the latter piece, wondering what might happen if Annie was brave enough to fire it.

"Hey Annie, you're like Jean, right?" Ashley asked as she watched the two test their guns.

"Is that an insult or a comparison?"

Ashley chuckled, and so did Armin. "No, no. What I meant is that the both of you are trying out for the Military Police, are you not?"

"Yes. Does it matter?" Annie said, getting a little defensive.

"Perhaps not. Never seen you actually try out in close quarters though, and since you're trying for the MP's, I would like to demonstrate something that my own instructor taught me long ago." Ashley said, getting both of their attention. Armin was curious to see how Ashley had been trained, considering she was his figurative portal to the outside world, so seeing how she was taught how to fight would be interesting. Annie stood straight, looking on as Ashley took off her lancer and put it on the ground, but did not put away her shotgun.

"Annie, you mind holding on to your musket for me? Armin, stand here." Ashley said, pointing in front of her for Armin to stand. The young boy complied, wondering what the outsider was planning.

"Alright, you ready?" She asked, and Annie seeing as she was doing nothing better nodded in reply.

"Good."

Armin suddenly felt the strong, armor-plated hand of Ashley grab his neck from behind and slam him into her own body, pinning him to her with an arm pressed against his body. The action was so sudden that the boy barely had time to react, and it took a couple seconds for him to realize just what Ashley was doing; hostage situation. The arm that wasn't holding Armin to her body had the sawed-off pointing straight at Annie, who was stunned to see Ashley use Armin like a meatshield. Ashley knew that this would certainly land her in trouble, but it was better this way. If they were told that this was happening, their reactions would enact slower and more coordinated. They needed to be thrown into a situation like this to prepare themselves for what Ashley feared most.

"A-Ashley, what are you-?!" Armin screamed, but was interrupted when the Onyx Guard shook him around.

"Hush," she hissed in his ear, "alright Annie, here's the deal. You're a member of the police and some psycho's got your buddy as a hostage. What do you do?"

Annie stood there, her musket still in her hands but not primed to shoot. With trembling hands and wide eyes, she aimed her musket at Ashley and Armin.

"Annie!" Armin strained from his position. He'd suspected that Ashley was strong, but not this strong! He'd been there when Eren and Reiner had been dumb enough to pick a fight with her, and he thought that it was just a show of force when she had sent Eren flying, but now he was suspecting that she was actually as strong as he imagined.

"What will you do, _Annie!_ " Ashley yelled, pointing her sawed-off underneath Armin's chin, scaring the boy in her hands.

" _WHAT WILL YOU DO?!"_ Ashley thundered, pressing the mouth of her gun on Armin's neck, making him close his eyes in fear. Annie was too busy in her own little world, her anxious mind far too overwhelming for any form of a real response. But she was raised better under the tutelage of her father and so she left the land of fear and narrowed her eyes, and made her response known by aiming for her "opponent"s foot. Ashley and Armin stood there expecting her to shoot, but all three of them were suddenly blindsided.

Ashley felt someone's foot collide with her side, sending her skidding across the ground. Armin was launched from her grip and sent straight towards Annie. The sawed-off fell out of her hand and right at the feet of whoever attacked her. The two trainees saw that it was Mikasa who kicked Ashley like a horse, her face full of rage. Following her was the equally angered Eren and a few of the other trainees from the cafeteria.

"What the hell are you doing!" Eren yelled at the disorientated Onyx Guard, his fists balled.

"Eren, wait!" Armin cried out, "She was training us! We were practicing a hostage situation!"

"She had her _shotgun_ on your _head!_ " Eren practically screamed, the sight of seeing his friend as a human shield causing him to see red.

"Back off, Yeager," Annie said stone-cold, annoyed that he and Mikasa had ruined her chance to overcome one of the most intense moments in her life, "we had it under control until you two idiots got here."

As the group continued to argue, Ashley slowly regained her composure, standing up while clutching the area that Mikasa had kicked. Ashley sucked in her breath and bit in the pain as she straightened out. She wasn't mad, but rather a little annoyed that Mikasa had interrupted their training. Ashley could understand the reaction of the two. Not every day you see someone pointing a gun at your friend's head.

"She could have shot you!" Eren said, taking a moment to glare at Ashley with a venomous look, "What the hell were you thinking?!"

"It was a test Eren," Ashley responded, kneeling down to pick up her sawed-off, "I had it under control, like Annie said."

"Not to come to Eren's defense, but it seemed a little extreme from all the yelling you were doing," Marco said.

"It was on purpose. You don't exactly learn anything if you're told what to do and how to react in a warzone," Ashley explained, "Everyone reacts differently, some faster or slower than others. If I had told Armin and Annie that we would be practicing hostages then it would defeat the purpose of the exercise."

"The purpose?" Jean questioned.

"Expect the unexpected, and how to risk a decision." Ashley answered. She walked over and grabbed her lancer from the ground, placing both of her weapons on her back as she walked off towards the classrooms.

As she left, they had begun to realize the Onyx Guard would not be holding back. _On anything._

...

In an unlit cavern located underneath the walls, hidden from civilization above, a hydra and its master rested on the ground. The scouting parties above that have been taking in the selected targets have been successful in keeping cover. The Underground had been wasted and left alone, and the population above had been totally duped to believe that it was titans who had left the city a bloodbath. What fools. Had they not seen the emergence hole where the embassy once stood tall? Perhaps their fear had been too powerful for them to rationalize anything other than the mutant humans that plagued their civilization.

Mortemus had taken his time with the invasion of Paradise, starting off slow to help heighten the fear and paranoia until it burst. The arrival of Ashley O'Malley was a certain wildcard and Mortemus would definitely have to deal with her later, but for now he could wait. Whatever he did, he could not let anyone above discover Antemurale and the secrets that the city held.

Thankfully Antemurale was safely hidden within the lands of Marley, the secret Locust city buried underneath the continent in what Saturn described as the New Hollow and far away from the Paradise Campaign. The Marleyians had stood their ground in the initial fighting after the Locust forces had swelled enough to launch a second E-Day from Antemurale, but their primitive weapons and insufficient titan forces were no match for the Locust and their terrible beasts of war. Saturn had been intelligent to also bring some Seran technology to this world, such as some COG weapons and vehicles. His tests on the development of a lambent serum was steady and the latest batch of subjects from the Underground had made it to Antemurale without a problem.

The screen to the right side of Mortemus's seat flickered on, and he realized that he had gotten a message from one of his hunters.

 _O'Malley has been accepted by the lesser humanity. Should we send an attack squad?_

Mortemus rubbed his scarred chin before typing a reply.

 _Not yet. Wait for them to get comfortable._

The Theron Elite kicked his hydra into high gear and flew off into the darkness of the New Hollow. He left wondering if Saturn and Fenix's machine would work on both lambent and titan together.


	8. ACT 2: Good Soldier

_-Sera-_

When Michaelson had heard of Fenix's plan, he'd wondered if his hearing finally caught up with his age. Finally having a place to set the _Sovereign_ down in safe waters was a blessing for the captain and the rest of the crew. The seas of Sera were becoming too dangerous to sail without risk of running into any Savage Locust or the Lambent, and with the amount of stalks that seemed to constantly reach farther and farther from the shorelines, setting up shop on the island sounded like a great idea. Without any signs of lambency or any locust coming their way, this small island chain would be a suitable home for now.

And then he heard that Fenix and some of his friends were going back to the mainland, by _helicopter_. That nearly made Michealson fall out of his chair.

"Do you know when you're leaving?" Michaelson asked, standing behind his desk while looking over a map of the surrounding sea. In front of him stood Marcus, Dominic and the leader of the nicknamed Island Stranded, a man named Brendan Yukon. Michealson found the man to be respectable and good-willed, a rarity nowadays with the whole wrecked world thing going on. Yukon was very concerned with keeping the people under his wing safe from harm, just like he himself was doing with the civilians and Gears that lived on the _Sovereign_. Yukon seemed to have been stranded for a while, but has gotten some sort of use to it, his rugged looks making look like a mountain man. He had the air of a leader, something that Michealson respected from the stranded man.

"We'll be leaving as soon as Brendan's guy fixes the other Raven. From there we're going to Mount Kadad, so who knows." Marcus replied.

"You do realize this isn't going to be a simple scouting mission, right Marcus? Mount Kadar is quite a distance away. And if you haven't noticed, we only have so many Ravens left since Jacinto fell." Michaelson took his seat behind his desk, his old legs getting tired of standing. He was right, and as famous and die-hard as Marcus Fenix was, that wasn't an excuse to simply take whatever he could want. Ravens, along with most COG machinery, were a rarity nowadays. Without any sort of factories or assembly lines left, the remaining Ravens were kept under keen eyes and dutiful repairmen. He was quite surprised to know that the stranded on this island had a Raven.

"The Stranded here are lending us their chopper, so you won't be worrying about having two missing Ravens instead of one," Dom said back, "And we'll bring back the Onyx Guard this time, that we can promise you. We won't be coming back until we've got her."

Michaelson chuckled, "Well, at least we can rest up on the island with the stranded here. Yukon's folks seem pretty keen on having us around."

"Having a ship such as your's will give us mighty protection from the Locust, captain. Plus, nothing beats living on dry land," Brendan said with a chuckle, "unless you count the Lambent, then fuck that. I'm outta there. The _Sovereign_ will be safe around these waters here. So far, we haven't been hit by any stalks, or Locust, besides the dead army in the mountain."

 _"Brendan?"_ The walkie-talkie on Brendan's hip sparked to life with a voice that sounded like Fredrick's, _"You there? We've got the chopper all patched up and ready to go. Tell Marcus and his team that we're waiting for them down at the helipads."_

"Well I guess that's it," Marcus said, turning around to leave with Yukon and Dom behind him, "See you Michealson."

"Uh huh, see you around Marcus, and good luck!"

...

The wood underneath Marcus's feet creaked and groaned under his weight as he and Dom made their way towards the main area of the island base. The dock that the ship was tied on was old, but still stood strong with the support of metal furnishings thanks to the stranded here. There were other people on the docks too, Gears, crew members and other people just chatting around, talking about the things that they've encounted across the seas. Many of the Gears were carrying weapons, but none of them were acting too serious with the stranded. There wasn't any reason to be, they weren't Locust.

"Marcus!" Marcus saw Anya further down on the docks waving at him. Beside her stood Carmine and Sam, both of them talking to stranded. "Over here!"

"Where's Baird and Cole? Is Jace with them?" Marcus asked over tac-com.

"Jace went with the two of them to wait for us at the helipad," Anya answered, stopping to talk to a stranded woman, "Yes, they'll be staying right here until we get back, you have nothing to fear. Looks like Fredrick kept his word about fixing up the Raven."

"Well then, let's get this over with," Marcus said, stopping by what appeared to be a billboard filled with posters of people who have gone missing over the years, ranging from children to elderly. He walked up to one of the posters, noticing that he could interact with it and get a closer look. It had a picture of a big, burly man with a large gray beard hugging his wife with a young kid behind him. "Now what could this be?"

 _MISSING PERSONS FORM_

 _NAME: Robert Yorkshire_

 _38 years old. Tan, large build. Last seen during the Jacinto evacuation. If you have any information, please contact Mary Yorkshire (400-302-3349-1)_

Marcus couldn't help but grumble. It wasn't that he was sick of seeing dead people, which he obviously was, he was just simply exasperated that there were missing posters up on the board. Some of them looked new. Nowadays it was just better to assume and more logical that anyone who was missing was more than likely dead. Loners didn't survive long on Sera these days, and anyone found by the Locust were going to die. Same with the Lambent. To Marcus, missing persons forms and posters asking for recent sightings were simply another form of a gravestone, but with no body to bury, much like most of the world.

Marcus and Dom parted opposite sides when they saw a group of kids running down the dock towards the boarding ramp of the _Sovereign._ To both of the Gears, they might as well have seen a couple ghosts. Neither of them could imagine growing up with the nightmare of the Locust War. To Dom, it felt more personal, seeing that he lost all of his own children because of the fighting. The very sight of youngsters playing around drew out some very deep memories.

"Dom? You alright?" Marcus asked, who had walked forward and realized that his friend hadn't been following him, his gaze and mind somewhere else.

"Y-Yeah, I'm fine," Dom answered after a couple seconds of staring into nothingness, "Let's just go."

Marcus knew better than to push a grieving man, so he left it at that.

"How did Michealson take the news?" Anya asked.

"The old man nearly had a heart attack when we told him that we'd be leaving by chopper," Marcus replied, "The ship will be safe here, away from any more Locust."

"Then let's head to it, don't want to keep waiting around for you boys to catch up, we've got a soldier to rescue and a mystery to solve!" Sam said, strolling next to Carmine as the group headed off to the helipad. Marcus felt the timely rush of excitement kicking in whenever he would have to go out there and save the world again, but there was something nagging at the back of his mind. Ever since the geobot was unlocked and the map to whatever lay beneath Mount Kadar was shown to them, Marcus had been wondering what really lay in the darkness. Where did the portal lead to?

And why, of all things, did the geobot call him _Adam Fenix_?

* * *

 _-Paradise-_

Alone in the dining hall, Ashley poked at her food, which had gone cold some time ago. She didn't care. Tasted like second-rate MRE's, anyway. There was a reason to why the Onyx Guard didn't feel like eating. Ashley just couldn't get the imagery of the cadets attacking her out of her head. She might have indeed gone a bit overboard with the training between Armin and Annie, but the looks of sheer anger that was plastered on both Eren's and Mikasa's face when they saw Ashley shove her double-barrel under Armin's chin was a little haunting.

As if they were ready to kill her at a flip of the switch...

Something must have happened to the two of them to be so reactive towards a "threat" to Armin's life. There's protective, and then there's being violent for the sake of others. She'd seen it plenty of times back on Sera, when tempers would flare at a moments notice. The dark question remained in her head; would the two of them have actually killed her to protect Armin, even if his life wasn't in any danger? Would they go that far to keep their friends safe? Perhaps digging around for some information on what happened to Eren and Mikasa when they were younger would shed some light on this. Shadis must have kept a book around here somewhere detailing the information about the cadets.

"Hey, Ashley?" The Onyx Guard looked up to see Connie and Sasha poking their heads in. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Sasha," Ashley lied, "just thinking about some things, lately."

"Like how Mikasa and Eren nearly killed you?" Connie asked, and Sasha whacked the back of his head, "Ow, Sasha! What the shit was that for?"

"For being rude!" Sasha yelled at him, and turned back to Ashley, "He didn't mean it, Ashley. You know Eren and Mikasa wouldn't kill you, they like you!"

"Mikasa tolerates me because I'm her superior and Eren hates my guts," Ashley said, clamming the two cadets in front of her. Sasha and Connie rubbed the back of their heads as the awkwardness began to set in after Ashley spoke, "Tell me, do you think I'm too tough on you guys?"

"Well, maybe you're a little rough on the edges, but that's because you're not from here, right?"

"Connie's right! We've only known you for like, what, a week?" Sasha said, sitting down next to the Onyx Guard's right and Connie going to the left, "Sure, you're tough, but that's because you're a hardcore, badass soldier! You can't really afford to be all soft on us recruits, you gotta be a bit of a jerk. Like a counter to Shadis, who's always a jerk. No offense."

"None taken."

"Hey Ashley, what was the whole thing with you and Armin about?" Connie asked, "We all know that you did something to him and Annie was there, but could you tell us? Everyone's bugging out that you nearly killed him or something like that."

"It was _under control,_ " Ashley slammed a fist on the tabletop, making both the bowl of food and the two trainees next to her jump, "His life was not threatened in any way. I wasn't actually going to kill him, for fuck's sake. I was merely playing for show, to try and see what Annie would do in a situation like that considering she's going to try out for the Military Police. She needs to be prepared for anything that could happen. There was no _reason_ for any of them to jump into the fray like that, no matter who I held up."

"Er, no offense Ashley, but you _did_ have one of your guns at Armin's head."

"I knew what I was doing, alright?!" Ashley snapped at Connie who recoiled at her shout, "And I wouldn't be so much of an idiot to actually point a gun at Armin's head without trigger discipline, now would I? I'm a trained soldier, and Armin is tough enough to survive whatever I throw at him. There, is that enough?" Her voice had grown harder the more she spoke. Sounds like Ashley wasn't fine in the first place. The little incident between her and the Shiganshina trio must have really shaken her up. She sounded like she was having some overwhelming thoughts and her temper was getting the better of her.

"Yeah, yeah I think that's good. C'mon Connie, let's go." Sasha stood up and dragged her friend out of the cafeteria, leaving the Onyx Guard alone for both their sake, and her own. A little alone time might help out Ashley.

Outside, Reiner and Jean were waiting for the two to come back outside. They heard the door open and turned to see Sasha leaving with Connie's arm in her grasp. They seemed a little shaken.

"So, how is she?" Reiner asked.

"Ashley's a little on edge right now, I wouldn't go in there," Connie spoke, "Whatever happened up there really got on her nerves."

"So is marksmanship class cancelled for the day?" Jean asked, with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. Shadis was still out on his trip to Wall Sina so that left Ashley in charge, and with this little thing happening it might just be a nice day off for Jean and the rest of the recruits. He figured that Ashley was so much of soldier that she wouldn't risk being emotional while handling weapons, and would have to cancel the class if she didn't want to go.

"Jean, could you think with your head for once?" Sasha said to him, putting her hands on her hips, "Ashley's _annoyed,_ she isn't sick."

"Hey I'm just saying, Ashley wouldn't put our lives at risk because she's a little flustered, right?"

"She'll get over it, I don't think she's used to training kids like us," Reiner said, looking back at the cafeteria doors, "Sometimes things happen, like what Mikasa and Eren did to Ashley when she was training with Armin and Annie. Their reactions weren't something that she was expecting, and that must have gotten on her nerves."

"What about Mikasa and Eren?" Sasha asked, "You think anything's going to happen to them? Think Ashley's gonna tell Shadis?"

"I don't know, maybe," Reiner responded, "She has every reason to."

"As much as it would be enjoyable to see Eren get his ass chewed out by Shadis and _maybe_ Ashley, I think I see the point of why they attacked her. I mean, how else would you respond when you see your friend at gunpoint?" Jean said, "But enough about that, did you hear what happened to the Underground?"

"No, what?"

"The whole city got wiped out," Reiner, Sasha and Connie let out startled gasps. The Underground was destroyed? How? "Apparently a couple titans dug through some caverns nearby and got inside the city and killed everyone, even the MP's. It's funny, even when you're beneath the earth, titans still manage to find you and kill you, huh." Jean said, telling what he had heard between a couple of soldiers positioned at the watchtowers. He himself had been near horrified to hear the news that the city got destroyed by titans below the earth. It must have been a nightmare to be stuck down there with no help from the surface, running until one of them found you.

"Oh my god, that's horrible!" Sasha gasped, her eyes becoming a little wet at the thought of so many people dead.

"The titans came from the ground? My god, is nowhere safe these days?" Connie mumbled to himself.

The doors behind them opened up and they saw Ashley walk out. Their conversation died right there. They kept themselves steeled when the Onyx Guard decided to make herself ready for the rest of the day. Her helmet was back on, hiding her face. Sasha and Connie took a couple steps back when she reached the bottom of the stairs to give her some room and not bother her any more than they did, but as they parted away from her Ashley let out an exasperated sigh.

"You know," she said, and the four listened, "I'm not going to hurt you, so you don't have to distance yourself from me. I'm feeling better, just had to give it some time to think it through, you know?" She sounded much more relaxed than previously before, so the four of them eased up towards the Onyx Guard. "For god's sake you're acting like I'm about to attack one of you for no reason."

"Like how you decked Reiner a couple days ago?" Jean laughed, and the bigger man let out a shout of annoyance and playfully shoved him. Jean looked ready to tackle Reiner to the ground and show him what he's made of but was stopped by a black-armored hand on his shoulder, same with Reiner.

"Alright, quit fighting you two," Ashley got between the roughhousing trainees like a mother talking to her children, "save your energy for the rest of the day. We're going to do some more training, so get ready and tell the others to meet me in the forest. Bring your ODM gears as well, I want to try something."

"Ugh."

"Hush Jean, we're working here."

...

"Alright cadets, eyes up!" Ashley shouted over the large group of young adults in front of her. The sun had just reached its peak in the afternoon day, giving her a good look at everyone that had arrived. The Onyx Guard stood tall and armed, allowing the trainees to see her quite clearly. She spied several of the trainees that she knew by name, and others that she still hadn't been introduced to. Perhaps this will be the day that she gets to know everyone. Her lancer and sawed-off sat ready to be used on her spine. Out of her eyesight, Eren stood there glaring at the Onyx Guard. Mikasa wasn't sharing his mood, but she still had a bone to pick with O'Malley. Hurting Armin put the outsider on her shitlist, no matter what she said.

"Today we're doing a different version of target practice. You'll be using both your muskets _and_ your ODM gear to clear a series of targets hidden inside the forest. There are also fake human and titan dummies for you to test these out," Ashley reached inside the box next to her and pulled out a shiny piece of metal, "your new bayonets, one of my requests from Erwin Smith himself." The trainees eyed the bayonets with wide, curious eyes. They didn't know that Ashley had asked for something like this!

She tossed the bayonet in her hand to Armin, who stood closest to her, "A word of the wise, these were designed as to be a last resort on titans should your swords run out or fail you. They retain their original design to be a piercing blade, so make sure to keep that in mind when facing any human adversaries. Now, before we begin, do any of you have any questions?" She saw a couple hands go up, so she went for the closest on to her.

"Yes, Marco?"

"Will you be scoring this for our final assessment?" The freckled boy asked.

"Yes, thank you for reminding me. Along with precision strikes on titan dummies, the human dummies will have two targets; head and heart. You can choose either one for points, but try to focus primarily on one body part, no need to waste any ammo. The remaining objectives are target boards which will test out your accuracy. You have another question Marco?"

"Not to be rude but didn't we already test out our marksmanship earlier this week?"

"I didn't finish. Today, I wanted to test out your accuracy while being mobile. You'll be training to shoot while in the air with your ODM, testing out to see if you can hit a target at high speed. Your grades will be based on your shots, your precision and your ability to get a clean kill on a titan," The Onyx Guard said, stunning the trainees. That was certainly a twist. Ashley was getting very creative, "To keep things easy, you'll be going in teams, five each. Each team will cover a perspective hot zone with their own targets and dummies, so there won't be any competition other than between your own group, performance-wise, of course."

"Who will be on whose teams?" Someone in the back asked.

"There's a pamphlet over on the bulletin board over there," Ashley pointed to her left, "where you'll be able just who's working with who. I decided to partner up people who are able to counter each other's skill, so nobody will be able to have a total advantage."

"Has she seen Mikasa in action?" Connie mumbled.

"Yeah, sucks for the group with her. They won't stand a chance."

"Jean, quiet. Get your game faces on, kiddos. Your training starts now."

...

With the teams already going about through the forest, Ashley stood by and watched, walking over to every part of the forest where the teams were practicing. She could hear the occasional fire of a musket in the air, as well as someone zipping across the treetops. She had to hand it to these kids, they knew what they were doing with those ODM devices. She couldn't see herself with one of those things, no matter how much she found herself envious of how fast they were going. Her armor was too bulky and there was no way it could handle her lancer.

In her arms were folders, specifically those about the cadets. She'd snagged them from Shadis' office before she came to the forest, using the time to oversee the cadets to read into their pasts. She knew that it was probably insensitive and very invasive of her to do this, but war never waited for anyone. Her main focus was Eren, Mikasa and Armin, whose histories with each other could shed some light into their issues regarding what happened. Maybe if she simply read about what happened to either of them then she could understand. She sat down at a table near the bulletin board, placing her weapons down at her feet.

 **...Objective: Learn about the past...**

First up, Armin.

"Let's see, both parents dead after childhood, lived with grandfather until the fall of Shiganshina, wherever that is," Ashley mumbled to herself. Maybe this Shiganshina is where everything went down with the titans that these cadets fought against. Wherever this place was, there might be answers to Eren and Mikasa's behaviors. Perhaps asking one of the trainees, or maybe Eren himself, might shed some light.

Speaking of Eren, his folder was next.

"Eren Yeager, lived in Shiganshina, there's that name again. Year, 850? Where the hell am I, the Dark Ages? Had a mother and a father, Carla and Grisha, both deceased. Huh, adopted Mikasa when she was five. No wonder they're so close together." She never would have guessed that the two of them were adopted siblings. That was new, and perhaps key to their relationships. Eren and Armin must be best friends, and Mikasa was Eren's sister who clung to him for protective reasons. Shiganshina would be their home. Ashley guessed that the deaths of Eren's parents must have forced them into military servitude.

It was common back on Sera for orphans to become a Gear. Ashley was one of them. It was one of the reasons she'd joined the COG. She had little to no memories of her own parents, and with no other living relatives she was on her own. She couldn't imagine having to lose someone so special in their lives at such an age.

Now onto the last.

"Mikasa Ackerman... Ackerman? Oh yeah, adopted. Probably her family's real last name. Lost her parents to a knife attack at five, good god. Adopted by the Jeagers. and lived in Shiganshina until it fell to the titans." Ashley skimmed over the file to get to the more important details of the three of them. Looks like their histories were not the happiest or the most supportive. Shiganshina must have been their home town, and if these folders were telling her anything, it was that Eren's parents more than likely were either killed or went missing during the attack. Ashley found herself feeling empathetic towards them, and she couldn't imagine what the rest of the folders would tell her.

"Ashley!" A sudden voice rang out, and she recognized it as Sasha. Quickly putting the folders down she looked to see the young girl land next to her with some level of grace with a hint of panic on her face. She looked scared. "Ashley, where's the first aid kit?"

The Onyx Guard stood up, "Who got hurt?"

"Connie. He sliced his hand on the bayonet and he's really hurt!" Ashley had to suppress a sigh, even if it was about an injured trainee. Of course it would be Connie. It must be his terrible luck. She followed Sasha into the forest, forgetting that she had left the folders out in the open.

...

"You'd think that those two would get some awareness and realize that there are _other_ targets."

"Maybe?" Armin replied, watching as his friend and Jean argued over just who got the clean shot into the dummies head, and who got the heart. Eren was sure he got the head but Jean was adamant that it was his shot that landed the hit, which lead to the escalating argument happening now as the five of them flew across the tree tops, Bertoldt right behind Eren and Jean to try and dissuade the two from arguing further, "Eren's bound to be super competitive, same with Jean, but this is just getting ridiculous. We could go out and try to find some targets ourselves and up our score."

"You mean _your_ score, Armin."

"I was talking about the both of us, Annie. Ashley said that this would count towards our final grades so we should take the advantage while we got it," The other blonde replied, "plus she never said that it was against the rules to help each other out. You want to get into the Military Police, right?"

"Of course. We had this discussion with Ashley today, Armin."

"Ah, right. The hostage thing. Y'know, if Eren and Mikasa hadn't come around, what would you have done to free me?"

Annie pondered for a moment before answering, trying to remember as best as she can.

"I probably would have shot Ashley in the foot. I don't know if her armor can withstand something like that, but it was the most rational thing that I could think of. I would injure and distract her from you and rush in to subdue her before she could get herself back in action." Annie answered, thinking back on what happened. It seemed to satisfy Armin, because he didn't say a word after. The boy was thinking about the brief yet emotional moment between the three of them, his fingers tracing the light bruises left behind on his neck from Ashley's death-grip. The woman certainly had the strength to back up her claims.

Annie would never admit it out loud, but she was starting to respect Armin a little more as time went on. Perhaps it was because of this new training from Ashley. The outsider certainly had a way to bring emotions out of people. At least he was more tolerable than the other three idiots practicing near them.

"-you can barely _aim,_ let alone shoot straight! I don't know what possessed Ashley to give you of all people a gun in this forest! You'd kill somebody!" Jean yelled at his fellow trainee, who looked ready to blow. Bertoldt was trying his best to keep the two of them calmed down, but to no avail.

"I don't see _you_ doing any better when you were kissing Ashley's ass the whole way through!"

"That's a filthy lie, Yeager!"

"C'mon you guys, cut it out," Bertoldt said, his voice getting buried by their own, "There are more targets for us to get some practice in, okay?"

"I'm not the one who can't shoot for shit, Bertoldt! I know what I'm doing, unlike the suicidal bastard over here!" Jean yelled at the taller boy, who backed off.

"Like you could shoot any better, you asshole!" Eren's anger was slowly getting the better of him the more he argued with Jean. Everyone else knew it too. It was only a matter of time before he detonated on the unlucky sap that would be in his way, which seemed like Kirstein today.

"Oh yeah, prove it! In fact, why don't you find Ashley and get her over here and we'll prove who's the better soldier," Jean said back, a smirk forming on his lips, "or are you _afraid_ of her, Eren?"

"FINE!" Eren snapped and turned around, zipping past Armin and Annie without slowing down in the slightest. As he went past, Armin saw that his face was contorted in rage, his green eyes ablaze and hard. Jean must have pushed some very sensitive buttons for Eren to act like that when he mentioned Ashley. Could it be that he was still sore about what happened a couple days ago during training? Armin decided to go after him, to make sure that he didn't do anything rash around the Onyx Guard. He'd heard that she wasn't exactly on the best mood today and that sent bad vibes down Armin's spine.

"Eren, wait! Stop!" Armin tried to catch up to his friend, but to no avail.

"Not now Armin!" Eren spat, _Jean just signed his goddamn death wish! I'll prove to him that I am a soldier, a Scout! He and that Onyx Guard are gonna eat their words!_

"Dammit Eren, listen to me!" Armin finally caught up to Eren and stopped right in front of him, "I know you don't exactly get along with her, but think about this! What do you think Ashley will do if you decide to show your face again when she's training someone else? After what you and Mikasa did to her? Just ignore what Jean said, alright? That's what they are, words. You're certainly doing better than me at this stuff anyway."

"I'm not afraid of her Armin," Eren growled, the thought of the Onyx Guard only making him angrier.

"That's not the point! You really think there isn't going to be any sort of repercussion if you march down there and start yelling at her?" Armin countered, and Eren turned away and closed his eyes, knowing he was in the wrong on this one.

"You calmed down yet, Yeager?" The two of them saw that Annie had followed, an annoyed look on her face, "I'd rather get this thing over with and not have to deal with any sort of drama between you and Kirstein."

"Annie's right, let's just head back and forget about all this and we can call it a day."

Eren took a deep sigh, closing his eyes to steady his nerves, "Yeah, I guess you're right. Sorry about getting all wrapped up in my temper Armin."

"It's alright, just don't let Jean get to you so-" Armin trailed off there, his eyes catching something in his vision. There, below on the ground, was a table, with a stack of paper folders right in the center. Some of them had been opened and read. He recognized it as the starting area of the training area and the entrance to the forest, and so did Eren and Annie. The three of them lowered to the ground and walked over, wondering what they were.

The first thing that Armin spied was that his name was on one of the folders. He picked it up and behold, everything about him laid bare for him to read. Eren did the same with the folder that had his name on it, and just like Armin it was chock full of info about him. Annie didn't bother, knowing that there wouldn't be a point to read her own folder. Whoever was doing this was having a gross invasion of privacy. These were for certain eyes only, confidential and certainly not for a quick read.

"What are these things doing here?" Armin mumbled to himself. He put the folder down and went to the stack, slipping his fingers and finding names on each one. They were all names that he recognized. _Why would anyone be reading these things here?_

It slowly dawned on Armin that there was only one person in the whole forest who might be doing this, seeing a very familiar pair of guns on the ground. And so did Eren.

"Damn her, that bitch!" Eren roared, throwing his folder onto the table and took off, Armin and Annie still on the ground. It was too late to try and get him to stop now. Armin watched as his friend disappeared into the forest to try and find the Onyx Guard, and he knew that a confrontation between the two was imminent, and it would get messy. Eren wasn't one to let things go like this. Annie stepped forward next to him, also watching Yeager begin his search for O'Malley.

"This day is certainly getting interesting."

...

Ashley had seen her fair share of ridiculous injuries, but it seemed that Connie was unknowingly and unwittingly topping her list every time he trained. Either fate was making out for him to have the worst luck imaginable, or he really was a complete idiot. This time it was a bit more serious; Connie had sliced his hand on the bayonet, which happened when he had dropped his musket while aiming for one of the bulls-eyes and tried to grab it, only to snatch the blade instead and nearly cut his fingers off.

"I swear something's going to lose, Springer. It's either going to be my patience or one of your limbs."

"I said I was sorry!" Connie yelled at her while she stitched up his hand. Sasha and Reiner stood by, watching to make sure Connie didn't suffer, "I didn't mean to grab the bayonet, it just slipped out of my hand! OW!"

"Sorry won't help your fingers grow back if you lose them, Connie." Ashley replied, finishing up the last bit of Connie's newest injury. With her helmet off it was easier for her to see the trainee's injury. With a quick snip of a scissor his hand was all sealed up. "There, all done. Now, just this once, I'll excuse you from the exercise because of what happened. I don't want to aggravate the wound by forcing you to practice. Make sure you keep that hand clean while it heals and wash it at least once a day. If it starts itching don't scratch it, just come to the infirmary and pour some alcohol on it. You got that?"

"Sure, whatever, _mom._ " Connie rolled his eyes, and Ashley pinched his cheek.

"It _is_ my newest job to take care of you little shits before you graduate, so yeah I am your mom, and you'll just have to deal with it until we leave."

"We?" Sasha repeated, not knowing if she'd heard her right.

"I'm not staying here forever Sasha. I've still got to find my way back home, beyond the walls." Ashley replied, taking a moment to stare out to the horizon, "You're welcome to join me if you want, though I guess we're running out of soldiers and time for both our worlds." For a brief second, the three trainees watching the Onyx Guard felt like they were getting a glimpse into Ashley's home again. If things were as bad as she said then getting home would be top priority for her. And yet here she was, training a group of kids that she had meet less than a couple weeks ago for an army that she held no allegiance to.

Maybe that was the reason why so many of the trainees respected her. She could have walked off and left them any time she wanted, but instead chose to stay here, to train them to be better soldiers because she felt like she had an obligation for their survival. A true soldier of humanity.

"Hey Ashley, if you do find your way back home," Connie said, "will you ever come back? Y'know, like to visit us? I know the walls aren't exactly the greatest place to come and stop by, but it would be nice to see you again if you actually get home."

Ashley pondered for a moment. The situation back on Sera desperately needed all the help it could get, but what about afterwards? If the COG could scrape a win against the Locust and the Lambent, then who knows what will happen after? Maybe when the war was over, if it ever ended. Or, simply put, there wasn't a home to go back to. That scared her more than anything, that there wouldn't be a Sera to return to, either taken by the Locust or utterly consumed by the imulsion.

"Sure," she said, knowing that was a half-truth, "I'll come back. Of course I'll come back, I promise it."

"Pinkie promise?" Sasha said.

"Pinkie _what?_ "

"It's a thing that kids do to make sure we keep our promises Ashley, you can't back down from a pinkie promise when it's offered," Reiner explained, only making the Onyx Guard seem more confused when Sasha stuck out her little finger. She had no idea what she was doing.

"You're supposed to use your finger and hook it with mine," Sasha said, "that's what makes a pinkie promise."

So Ashley did what Sasha said, coiling her armored finger around Sasha's and shaking it, like some sort of bizarre handshake. This was her promise to return.

"There, see! That wasn't so bad."

For a brief moment, Ashley felt a sudden pang of happiness. She honestly felt proud that she could be able to teach this diverse class of egos and characters on what it meant to be a soldier. They were all so unique in their own way.

But that always wasn't a good thing.

"Hey, is that Eren?" Connie said, pointing to the canopy above him, "What's he doing here? Isn't he supposed to be with Bert and his group?"

Ashley and the others turned to see that there indeed was Eren, flying right towards them rather fast.

"Maybe someone else got hurt?" Sasha wondered.

Ashley noticed that there was something off about Eren's posture. Normally, with the amount of drag created with the speed of the ODM gear, you'd be leaning back to create some form of balance. Eren, however, wasn't doing so, instead he was leaning forward. Everything else was hidden in the darkness underneath the canopy, so Ashley couldn't really get a glimpse of his face. Eren suddenly landed, not bothering to slow down or adjust trajectory. He stumbled at first, and started to run. He hadn't said a single word, and Ashley was starting to get worried.

"Hey Eren, check it out! New battle scars!" Connie put his hand up to show off his stitches, but Eren paid no mind to Connie, focusing all his attention on the Onyx Guard. "Eren?"

"Cadet Yeager? Is something wrong?" Ashley asked as Eren neared her, and realized that his verdant eyes were alive with anger. She also wasn't expecting him to suddenly lunge at her, and with her caught totally off-guard by his aggression, and punch her right in the cheek. The strike caused her to drop her helmet as she tried to collect her bearings when she fell on her ass, more surprised than hurt. It wasn't the strongest punch she'd ever received but the fact that it had come out of nowhere blindsided her.

"Eren are you crazy?!" Sasha shrieked. Reiner and Connie stood there slack-jawed at seeing Eren run up and punch the Onyx Guard for literally no reason. "What are you doing?!"

"WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT?!" Eren thundered, screaming so loud that it seemed to shake the forest, "Who gave you the right to look at my past so that you could judge me!"

"Eren, what the hell are you talking about? Would it kill you to stop for a second and explain what's going on?" Reiner put his hands up to try and diffuse the situation. Ashley was still stunned and Eren looked ready to tear the Onyx Guard a new one, so he had to try and play it very, very safe. Connie decided that he wasn't going to get involved in this shit and kept quiet while Sasha stood by in case something went really wrong.

"Your past?" Ashley said out loud, and then remembered. _The folders, you idiot Ashley, you left them right out in the open! Of course someone would find them, who else but the Yeager boy as well?_

"Don't you play dumb, outsider!" Eren raged. "You don't deserve to be here in the first place!" The more he spoke, the more Ashley began to realize just what was driving Eren to act like this. From what she was able to read about him, the loss of his mom and dad must have really hurt him, and so he joined the military so he could become a Scout and avenge them. She could almost hear her own cynical laughter when she realized that her coming out of _literal nowhere_ to teach these kids on _how_ to be a soldier must have rubbed Eren the wrong way. Or maybe he was still sore from that talking-to a couple nights ago, and the duel.

"I'll admit, it was a little unethical for me to read them," Ashley began, wiping some saliva from her mouth.

"A little?! Do you have any sort of sense of other people's privacy?"

"Ashley?" Connie finally opened his mouth, "What's Eren talking about?"

 _Might as well come clean._ "While you were training, I decided to investigate files pertaining to certain trainees here, and if you haven't been aware for the past couple moments, Eren was one of them. I was simply trying to learn on how I can help you, or any of you, overcome any sort of tragedy that still affects you today," Connie and the rest of the trainees stood by, stunned that Ashley had done such a thing, even if it was for a good cause. Ashley turned to Eren, who was still steaming at her. Maybe addressing him directly would calm him down, "I wasn't trying to be invasive, Eren. I just wanted to know why you and Mikasa were so eager to try and stop me when I was training Armin and Annie."

"You don't know anything about me!" Eren yelled at her, his eyes now pinpricks, "I'm not some file you can open and close whenever you feel like it!"

"I'm a _spec-ops_ soldier, Eren. It's my job to know as much as I can about anyone, including you," Ashley said, and Eren flinched at her brash statement. She was starting to lose her patience, between him hitting her and then yelling at her, this confrontation was surely going to end on a sour note. "I'm sorry if you don't like it, but that's what I do. I learn and I react."

"Some soldier you are, then! You're probably a _spineless coward_ who ran away the first chance she got!" Eren screamed, his temper causing what he really thought about about Ashley to spill out. Since day one of meeting her he was skeptical about her, but as time went on and she got more involved Eren only started seeing a deserter who abandoned her army.

And Ashley wasn't too kind on taking that sort of smack-talk.

 _Oh, that does it._

"Eren!" Sasha gasped.

"You're out of fucking line, Yeager," Ashley warned, the first time that any of them heard her curse with that much force, and it was not a welcoming sound, "I'm warning you right now, if you don't get back to your group and finish your training you can kiss having dinner goodbye. If you're willing to put this behind you, which I will allow, then I'll forget this ever happened, you can go back to your friends, and I won't have to punish you." Ashley was desperately trying to hold in her own failing temper. If Eren tried to do anything else, there's no telling just what she might do.

"Yeah dude, you gotta calm down!" Connie said, "For god's sake Eren, please don't start anything!"

"She's the one who started it! Going behind our backs, hurting our friends, who the hell do you think you are coming in here and bossing us around?!"

"Dammit Yeager, I am _NOT_ your enemy here! I'm trying to help you, but that can only work if you let me!" Ashley said to him, trying to bridge a connection between her and Eren and begin some form of mutual respect. She wasn't lying as well. The battles that she waged across the surface of Sera replayed in her mind, all the people that died fighting the locust, keeping the rest of humanity safe from the endless horde.

"I don't need your help! What can some bitch like you tell me about killing titans when she hasn't even fought one?! You don't know what it's like to watch people suffer! You're no soldier Ashley, _you're a goddamn JOKE!"_

 **CRACK!**

Ashley had heard enough. If her words wouldn't stop him then her fists would have to make do. She'd punched him straight across the jaw to shut him up, and without holding back to show just how strong she really was. The young trainee let out a grunt of pain before being grabbed by the collar and slammed against a tree. To the others who were watching in numb shock, Ashley was totally manhandling Eren like was paperweight. She had him up off the ground as high as she could hold him, and it didn't seem to give her any problem.

Eren looked down from his bruised, dripping face to see the stormy blue eyes of Ashley glaring up at him. And by god, she was _mad._

"You think I don't know _war_?"

 _WHAM!_ She'd slammed him against the tree again.

"You think I don't know _suffering?_ "

 _WHAM!_ And again.

"You think I don't know what it's like to watch cities _crumble_ and _burn_? To watch whole populations _die_?"

 _WHAM!_ Once more. And then she hurled him towards the other trainees with a mighty throw. He ragdolled his way to Reiner, who knelt down to give him some support as Sasha and Connie made their way to the two of them. They stopped in their tracks when Ashley walked forward.

"Just how long are you going to let your anger control you? Do you think the titans will be forgiving as I am? Your mother and father might be dead, and it might be your fault, or the titan's fault, but you can't change what happened. If you want to avenge their deaths, then stop dwelling in the past and get over it. You aren't the only one here that lost someone to the titans." And with that, Ashley reached down to pluck her helmet from the ground and placed it back on her head. She walked off without another word, leaving the four trainees behind her stunned. Eren watched her go back into the forest, her words replaying in her mind on repeat.

...

The sun had set. The training was over. Mikasa had scored top marks, unsurprisingly. The rest of the trainees had gone to bed, but news of what happened between Ashley and Eren had spread like wildfire. It was shocking to hear that Ashley had not done anything to Eren after he'd attacked her, many assuming for no reason. The young lad had been bombarded with questions after he'd gone to dinner, which was surprising since Ashley let him. And yet, he found himself not hungry, even after such an intense day. Everyone had crowded around him to hear just what happened.

Sasha, Connie and Reiner were the only ones besides Ashley who knew of the complete truth. Everyone else had different reactions to hearing what happened. Jean had laughed his ass off, saying that "all you had to do was talk to her, you numbskull!" before finishing dinner. Mikasa had sworn vengeance against the Onyx Guard, promising to "pay her in full" for hurting Eren. Everyone else had chatted their way back to their dorms. Ashley had vanished the moment the training had been declared over, and so did the folders, put back into Shadis's office.

Eren found himself wandering the training site after dark, when the moon had risen, bathing the area in milky white light. He couldn't stop thinking about what Ashley had said to him.

 _"...you're letting your anger control you..."_

 _"...you can't change what happened..."_

 _"...stop dwelling in the past, get over it..."_

"How can I?" He said to himself, wandering into the forest towards the hidden lake that Reiner had found. After walking for some time, he found a place to sit down, a log on the shores of the lake. He stared up at the moon, wondering what Ashley meant. Did she mean to forget the past entirely, forget about his mom and move on with his life, not looking back? Is that what she did when her own enemies were killing her people? Did she force herself to forget?

It took a couple moments to realize he wasn't alone. As if fate was playing a game with him, Ashley O'Malley was standing not ten feet away from him, also staring into the moon. It seemed like she hadn't noticed him. She was also out of her armor, wearing only her undergarments. How she was able to do so without anyone seeing her was crazy. Eren's eyes found themselves absorbing her body, taking note of her muscles, her curves and the scars that decorated them. There was no way she did those things on herself.

 _So much for being a joke. She really is what she says she is, a soldier of humanity._ Eren chastised himself for being so angry with her. It was so uncalled for. Now there was no doubt that she hated him. The fact that she was even standing near him, without her knowing, only deepened his shame. He stood up to leave, but was interrupted.

"Leaving so soon?"

Eren stopped. He turned around to see that Ashley was looking at him. Looks like she knew he was there all along. Her voice wasn't as hard as it was earlier today.

"Sorry, I'll just go, I know you hate me," Eren mumbled, not wanting to interact with her in the slightest.

"Eren, wait," Ashley said, and the boy stopped, "I don't hate you. I never hated you."

"You... you don't?"

"No, god no," Ashley said, a small smile gracing her lips, "You're a kid, an angry one, but a good kid nonetheless. Plus, I kind of already forgave you for socking me in the face."

Eren stood there, dumbfounded.

"How can you say that?" He asked, walking towards her. The level of forgiveness that this woman was throwing at him was so unlike anything that Eren had experienced, "I attacked you for trying to help me. I called you a joke, a coward. That you didn't _deserve to be here_. And here you're telling me that I'm a good kid. I'm _not_. I... I..." His lower lip trembled, and his emotions were threatening to spill out. Ashley stood there, watching as this poor young man fell apart in front of her. He furiously tried to wipe away the tears that were forming at the corner of his eyes. Of course he'd start _crying_ in front of the Onyx Guard, as if he hadn't humiliated himself enough.

"Remember when I said that I know suffering? I also know when people are hurting," Ashley softly said to him, causing Eren to snap out of it and look her in the eyes, the once stormy blue now calm and serene as she put her hand on his shoulder, "You're just a boy, Eren. Let yourself make mistakes. If anything, take that anger and fuel your desire to be the best you can be. One day I know you'll make a great Scout. Your parents would be proud of you."

Eren pressed his forehead on her chest, and before she could say anything Ashley felt a sudden wetness. The poor lad was crying. His soft sobs were muffled against her skin, but she could feel his shakes as she wrapped her arms around him and gave a soft embrace. She let him weep, rather than keep his emotions behind a wall.

"There, feel better?" She asked.

"Y-Yeah, I do. Thanks Ashley," Eren said back.

"Hey Eren," she said, "I know I promised Armin, but would you like to hear about my home outside the walls?"

"Really? What's it like?"

"Well, for starters," she began, "Back where I'm from, we have two moons."

* * *

 **NIBBA you thought this story was dead haha. This chapter might be super intense for some. I really wanted Eren and Ashley to butt heads over ideologies, but as I began to look deeper in Eren's character I realized just how sad his life is; his mom died in front of him, he ate his own father, he struggled to become a better soldier, and unbeknownst to him in this story he's got a power that he never asked for.**

 **Ashley's the same way. Last of the Onyx Guards, has no remembrance of her family, all her friends on Sera are dead, and she's out in the middle of god-knows-where. So really it became a bridge between two very hurt people that share similarities despite being worlds apart. Plus having Eren confront his inner demons makes for a better story than just Ashley beating the shit out of him for mocking the dead of Sera.**

 **Next chapter will have much more Locust.**

 **See ya.**


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